


Wonders of Heresy

by PipesFlowForeverandEver



Series: Hymns of Struggle [2]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Body Horror, Developing Friendships, Hurt/Comfort, Male-Female Friendship, Mild mention of vomit stains, Minor Coarse language, Minor Violence, Mystery, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sammy survived Bendy, but not without its angst, this is a bit fluffier than the first part huh, two messed up people realizing they're all the other has
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-02-27 21:03:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 22,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13256583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PipesFlowForeverandEver/pseuds/PipesFlowForeverandEver
Summary: What's there to live for after you die? You struggle to exist- to make it all the way to your Lord- and all that greets you is Hell wrapped through your own flesh. Purgatory must be real after all. I pray and I pray and finally, something comes. My lord, why does it make me feel this way?  -An empathetic attempt to comprehend and console Sammy Lawrence and other residents of the studio.(A direct continuation of "Hymns of Struggle," the first work of this series of the same name).





	1. It's Familiar

**Author's Note:**

> I only recently got an AO3 account, so I also have this fic posted on fanfiction.net. If you're worried about the authenticity of this posting, feel free to contact my fanfiction.net account of the same name and I'll verify for you that this work is not stolen.
> 
> This fanfic references violence and its aftermath as well as depictions of hallucinations and re-experiencing trauma. I do want to assure, however, that this fic attempts to realistically bring together two beings with deep emotional troubles in a way that does not romanticize abuse, but still acknowledges wrongdoings and the trauma of others' actions. This fic is an unnamed AU in which Henry experiences chapter 1-3 canon but the studio is left as is or nearly as is for however long it's been until the OC appears.
> 
> I have chosen to write this series in parts so it may be easier to read, as I plan on it being quite lengthy. This second half will eventually contain lighter moments now that the struggles *nudge nudge* of "Hymns" have been properly established. Where "Hymns" focuses on suffering, "Wonders" will focus on what it left behind for them.
> 
> I mostly write this for both your enjoyment and mine, but comments still brighten my day if you have any thoughts.
> 
>  **Please note** there is a major change I made to Chapter 1 of the first fic, Hymns of Struggle, as of 1/28/18. I heartily recommend you go to that chapter and read the notes I've added that explicitly states the change, as it allows the fic to have the sentiment I desire it to convey.
> 
>  **Notes as of 5/18/18:**  
>  I'm just gonna keep an updated list at the end of this work and all the others of all the spectacular fanart you wonderful people keep making me that I'll never stop screaming about. I'll still be posting links in the notes of chapters as new art is made, but it makes sense to keep a big list somewhere!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”_ \- Jeremiah 17:9

Do you know what it feels like? 

There’s a warmth that shakes your heart and tickles up your throat, placing its tender hands decisively upon your shoulders. It fills you with both uncertainty and assurance. Of what? That depends; sometimes you don’t even know. And even if you don’t know, it’s somehow still okay. You’re so scared and somehow, it’s okay. 

What are you supposed to feel about a feeling, though? 

It becomes a winding cycle of languor, leaving you more loose-footed than before. Why is this acceptable? Everything seems wrong. Why are you so calm? No, you aren’t calm at all. Why is “calm” the only word that conveys the right experience when it’s so very mistaken? 

The why, why, and why’s take over your psyche no matter how hard you try to push them back. Attempting to answer them digs you deeper, doesn’t it? 

And so you’re swathed in this newness, too struck to say even a word of what prowls the core of your essence, even as it pulses so forcefully that your lips quiver. 

Even as the answers lay by your side, contained as lambent ghosts in a lantern. It’s all right there…right there…

The power that drives your spirit cannot do the same for your voice nor your body. It is a grand display of the supremacy of your own emotion, the control it has over everything inside- a betrayal of what little it can do in the outer universe without its cooperation. 

Do you believe in astrology? Even if you don’t, a simple bit of research quickly shows how confusing and vague the stars seem to point with such conviction. 

From the angle each of these two had, their hands were positioned to meet between them. Would you be surprised to hear they didn’t dare to touch at all? It was merely an optical illusion as they remained side by side, weary visions fixed upon one another. 

It was symbolic of an estrangement so close to being broken if only one of them was brave enough to reach; something as small as a twitch could have jumped the remainder of their gap. 

Were the heavens aligned in perfect doom or benevolence as the disciples sat so close? “Both” is probably the nearest answer to the truth. 

Creatures of light and darkness drifted into each other’s spheres, the grey they crafted trickling slowly but surely until it went beyond their perceptions and began to tint their very beings. 

Do you know what it’s like to be lost in a feeling, with everything and nothing to be done all at once? 

That’s where they were, resting together in recovery after seeing the face of God. 


	2. But Not Too Familiar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"’God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant in the earth, and to keep you alive by a great deliverance.’”_ \- Genesis 45:7

There’s a certain sensation one gets when they move into a new apartment, house, or even hotel room. It’s something that can only be described as both refreshing and anxiety-inducing, the culmination of change that often represents a larger step in a life’s great journey. 

It was just like that except nothing like that. 

Sammy’s left hand gripped the respective knee as he absorbed the stimuli of this place, finally able to think of something besides the woman that sat next to him upon the bed he led them to. He didn’t know what it meant for something to be “homey,” but that was this. 

It had nearly everything she had requested: water, a place to lay down, even some food cans and pieces of clothing littered here and there. It looked lived in; he hoped that wasn’t a fact. He wasn’t sure if he could- or would- fight another of his inky brethren to keep this place for her. But it was all that she needed, so he walked her all the way here. 

He didn’t really take the time to consider doing otherwise in his panicked decision to stop whatever was going on before. 

Sammy craned his neck and felt fingers from both hands duck under his mask to caress the high points of his cheeks. He didn’t want to think about that again just yet; he had just spent who knows how long stewing that image round and round. The stress that accompanied its return was too much to revisit so soon. 

The truth was that despite all the time he spent dragging his corpse along the stained floors, he didn’t remember seeing this room before. There was very good reason for that; this was arguably the most feared, dangerous level in the whole studio. 

_“I’M ALICE ANGEL!”_

Sammy decided it was for certain the most feared, dangerous level in the whole studio. 

So why here then? Again, it had everything she wanted. He had just enough awareness of her humanity to accept that she couldn’t reside permanently in the kingdom Bendy permitted him to maintain, to use so Sammy may properly show his great reverence for his lord. No matter how deeply he wished to stay there forever, even before the woman arrived it had been necessary to make rounds about the halls for some reason or another. 

As he released a sigh, the musician felt yearning for his instruments, having never voluntarily left them for quite this long. Maybe he’d bring in his favorite banjo next time-

There were two distinct troubles that pinched at him with this idea. The previous sight of his most prized possession damaged and still laying upon the ground was one; it wasn’t the worst, considering he recalled being able to reattach the tuning bits before. It was much more terrible to realize that without debate, he had presumed he’d be staying with the woman in this room. 

Even in his escape from concepts of trepidation, others had appeared to take their place. 

And on queue came yet another. 

Sammy both felt and heard his voice’s uncontrolled reply, a scream that came out as a soft whisper. His knuckles clenched until his fingers totally curled as if trying to poke holes through the material of his pants. 

As they sat side by side on the gurney, she had finally fallen asleep for the first time since they met. The candles couldn’t allow the sight of her dull head on his glistening hide to be concealed. 

His shoulders raised heavily a handful of times, but not with the weight of his companion. He didn’t know what to do and couldn’t decide how he felt about this; it was such a foreign concept for him to be this close to someone else let alone be _touched._ Somehow it was different from when they touched out of necessity. Now that it was a contact without obligation, he was entirely lost, unable to find a proper response. It didn’t come to him that maybe this was a fear born from an entire lifetime without human tenderness, without someone equal to him that would have such trust as to dictate he guard their unconscious body. 

After swimming through leagues of thoughts with no words, Sammy gradually shifted his head towards the pressure against his right side. With the horror and alarm of her arrival retreating just for a moment like the moon tugs away the waves, he was overcome by the details of mortality she carried with her. Skin was now pulled over her eyes, light-colored wisps pointing outward from the bottom that caught in the glow of the candles. He didn’t have eyelashes- no one did- and so it struck him with intensity. 

As he stared at her face, he saw streaks, smudges, and dots all over; it made him realize _being_ ink was very different than _being surrounded_ by ink. Sammy noticed some of the dots were…brown? Brown wasn’t an uncommon sight here, but finding it smeared onto a surface was entirely unheard of. 

Unknowing she walked in with those marks, he had to shove aside the urge to wipe them off her jaw. The terror of him being the one to initiate touch had been fast instilled in that past moment where he tried to comfort her in the company of his instruments. Even though it was followed by an understanding that it was disgust over his actions, he couldn’t _not_ believe that his very existence didn’t sicken her as well. Not even her choice back then to grasp his hand had erased this conviction. 

And so he resigned himself, painstakingly slow in his leaning onto the wall behind them as to not disturb her, still encased by the many haunting questions that soaked through the wood and saturated their home. 

Maybe it was entirely by accident, but she had finally filled the gap between them. 


	3. But Not Too Unfamiliar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.”_ – Psalm 3:5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate summary: IT'S A NEW CRAAAAAZE
> 
> I hope that it's alright that this chapter is short like the last few. The ending point for this one just felt too perfect.

A chill had seeped into her head and washed over her like a blanket of frost. At first she was frightened, for when she opened her eyes they saw only black. But then a yellow blush started to skulk in front of her, creating shapes out of shade. One of these glimmering, dark planes in her view started to move, and she felt it was moving her as well. 

There was a small flame in the room that reminded her of his humanity. 

Bloom, bend, wither. 

* * *

A mess of items were spread in a half circle almost ritualistically on the floor in front of her crossed legs. It was a miracle- a surreal endowment for her homesick heart- and yet it simply made her compress her lips. 

There were things in her backpack she didn’t remember putting in there, some she _definitely_ didn’t put in there, and many that had small splotches of wet ink resting on their surfaces. 

Her temples started to ache from furrowing her brow so much. 

Even though the contents of this bag were once a pipedream she longed so much for, having them before her now merely left her exhausted; it compelled her to lift herself from the floor to be liberated of this strain, at least for a moment. 

As she did, the woman saw someone watch her from across the room. Or well, at least his “face” was doing that. 

Sammy was seated upon the gurney, inclined against the wall; he had been since she found herself leaning into his side. Her face was probably still red, honestly; such a thing was never her intention, something woven from the fibers of physical and emotional weakness. 

A grimace formed as she again felt the pains of her last contact with her family, and she forced herself to push it aside once more. 

Even though she couldn’t blame herself for being that despondent, the woman never intended for him to be a part of it, even after beholding the ink demon itself and subsequently removing everyone of her old life. Not even something so drastic, so disturbing. And so, she felt remorse rather than relief to find herself next to him as she was. 

Thankfully though, he…didn’t seem to notice? The man hadn’t moved nor spoken, even when she retracted her touch. Was he asleep, too? She had briefly considered doing something like waving her hand over his eyes-…mask. Instead, she left him be, accepting either his stare or his repose. For some reason she didn’t feel like experimenting, and well, she still didn’t even after all this time awake only made the mystery more potent. 

She noticed the closed door only a few feet ahead of her, seeming to plead she open it. 

And here came a conflict. She very much did not want to go somewhere she didn’t recognize. Hell, she didn’t want to go _anywhere._ Even though she remembered walking through this door to enter this small- er, bedroom-? …her weariness dimmed the memory of what came just before it. All that remained was walking, ink, a wall, and then walking again until her legs could finally, safely give way. 

So of course, someone with enough knowledge to accept she couldn’t handle this world alone would fear doing exactly that. Nothing lay ahead besides what she didn’t know. 

But then there was Sammy. It wasn’t out of curiosity that she finally opened her bag, actually; it was born from a long, uncomfortable era of silence. She didn’t have the strength or bravery to speak to him- not after all that had happened- and so she busied herself with what was at her disposal. And now that was done, leaving her with the unbearable loudness of her thoughts. She gazed at the objects of the room one more time, including the ones that weren’t hers. 

_Tick tick tick tick tick tick!_

Overhead, a cartoonish clock watched her pensively as it beat alongside her heart, or rather her beat caught up to its. The room sheltered many things here: there was a chest she didn’t dare to open, a large metal gear she didn’t dare to touch, and a tall shelf she didn’t dare to reach. 

She looked down at her belongings as they lay in an untidy yet organized manner where she sat before; they were all so eerie to look at in the candlelight, drops of black sticking out so sharply upon them like portals to another world. It caused her shoulders to raise with unease. 

The woman watched Sammy intently as she opened the door and stepped out, but he did nothing to stop her. 

* * *

He knew time had passed. He didn’t know how much, but evidently enough to change his surroundings. 

This had…happened before. Numerously. Sammy would often fade in and out of consciousness as he lived his sunless days amid the studio. Sometimes he’d be back where he last recalled- as he was now- and sometimes he’d stop in his steps, realizing he was walking the halls. Sometimes he was running. He’d look behind and nothing was there. 

Sometimes in between there were visions, apparitions that couldn’t be determined to be real or not. Bendy smiling upon him; watching his lord’s shadow line his body until he felt nothing; silhouettes of someone that bellowed at him with all their being. Like a dream, there was only enough remaining of these events to itch the back of his mind thereafter. 

The sight before him now was so unusual that he wondered if it was yet another of these visions. 

Many objects were lined across the floor ahead. He…didn’t recognize any of them. He didn’t know where they came from- 

The bag was gaping upon the floor, its insides stained with such a bright color that he shook his head backward, almost excruciatingly. Although so very unsure of himself, Sammy pushed his palms against the mattress of the gurney to drop himself to the floor so he may investigate. 

And just at this moment his heart began to race, for he realized the weight that had strapped him to the bed was gone.


	4. Creature Comforts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”_ – Hebrews 3:13

“Why the fuck is there service down here, anyway?!” 

It was a mutter that came out so spitefully and so high pitched that it seemed comedic, but it was a legitimate question. It was also of course because she habitually tortured herself, even after the sheer number of unread messages turned her stomach again and again. 

Fortunately, they seemed to die down, what must have been a total of a hundred-so messages from her loved ones eventually trickling into…nothing. So her antagonization had worked, and this is what “bittersweet” meant. How long had she been asleep to allow this to happen? She glanced to a corner of the room pensively. How long had she sat in that ink, stapled to the floor by her tears until Sammy took her away? 

In such an ocean of heartache and unadulterated shock, her thoughts about that moment didn’t resurface until she left Sammy behind on the bed. She didn’t recall a terrible amount of detail, but she remembered him just…staring. He knelt to her level and when she finally saw him, it was a terrible connection between her eyes and the paint over his face. Wordlessly, he lifted her out of the pool previously made thicker and thicker by a…a… **thing** …and they left it behind. If he had said anything she wouldn’t have had the ability to reply, and yet she didn’t like the way his silence felt. That same sentiment remained upon the bed and refused to leave, even as she cast him out of her sight. 

There was an emotion about him she couldn’t place, and it made her unsure how to feel herself. This seemed to be the trend, regretfully. 

The inquiries about time itself, however, were at least plausible to answer if not for one incredibly unsettling change in her phone. The muscles of her cheeks tightened and wrinkled in a frown. 

It no longer told time. 

The timestamps of old messages remained the same. Actually, so were the ones from right after- oh gosh was it _really…?_ \- “Bendy” gave it back to her. But…-

Holding her breath and closing her eyes until she scrolled past the bulk of the rejection, pleas, and anger, she rechecked the timestamp of her last messages to her mom and found that it displayed the hour and minute…but nothing else. All messages before what was presumably the moment her phone fell in the ink were normal; they displayed any measurement from the minute to the year. Her thumb tapped the home button. 

No, the analog clock still didn’t work. It was just a blank grey box against an otherwise unremarkable background. She didn’t dare test it by messaging someone again, but she didn’t seem to have any sign of current time at all, not even hour or minute like before. It was like its passage slowed or just…crumbled and decayed, like it was slowly eaten by the liquid abyss. She wished she could stop staring; her eyes were so sore from doing so. Quietly and abruptly, her heart rumbled up her neck so she may hear her own desires. 

“You know what?” 

She opened a gaming app, green light kissing dead eyes and a flat mouth. 

“Fuck it.” Might as well get her use out of it if she really couldn’t take herself away from the thing causing her pain. 

Just like many times before in her life, distracting herself couldn’t numb the pain, but at least it kept the voices of unspeakable anxiety from getting louder and louder. 

“People made out of ink that I’m trapped with forever. Ah shit. Ah dang.” 

Sarcasm couldn’t save her now either, her pulse only quickening as she failed to overlook the troubles of existence. 

* * *

Clothes. 

Clothes rested at the end of the short corridor- a pair of overalls like his and then what appeared to be short pants with a childish design on them. They were boxers, but that wasn’t a word in his vocabulary yet. They were decorations that had remained since whoever was here last- maybe even before them- but it still brought him pause. 

Sammy didn’t notice someone in the next room spot him standing in front of the garments, he being swallowed up in his own worry and fascination that his search necessitated a trail back to the first doorway he passed, not the one she waited for him in. 

More clothes. 

More clothes were hung in this strange space of tall squares and long glass. 

This room scared him. It was enticing, oh so enticing, but it was a path of misery- a firewalk to things of value. 

He couldn’t see himself in the mirrors yet; he didn’t want to. But he could see in two places that this surely was her cloak in front of him. 

Oh no…oh no… 

…He had to. 

Sammy’s foot scraped the floor, hardly lifting, as he made his way straight towards the cloth hung over the bathroom stall. Even as he reached up and held its limp softness in his grasp- so _unusual_ -…the fear over what this object could mean was corroded by the one lurking by his side, gnawing into his shoulder from a distance. 

Should he look? Was he…obligated to look? Alas, that decision was made for him by the morbid instinct of a past life. 

Dripping. Dripping. He was dripping. A huddled pile of black hardly clothed himself by yellowing paper and scratched wood. 

His cursed, horrible fingers squeezed the cloak tighter in front of his unspeakable flesh. 

A sound scraped his throat. What was it? He didn’t know, not what it said- if anything- nor how loud it was. 

It brought her to him all the same. 

* * *

“Woah, hey!” 

So fortuitously, this was enough to claw his gaze away from the beast that enraptured him. Oh so barely, his nightmare still stood by his side, but at least like always it was now only in the back of his mind. Having it in front of him again was…-

The woman saw him sway side by side like he was about to fall in dizziness. With each swing a drop or two scaled down his collarbone. 

“…You okay?” 

His head raised up and down, but it was more likely to be a look rather than a nod. Oh boy. 

The woman before him stopped leaning against the doorframe, having made her decision in this oh so bizarre, unsettling scene. 

“…Come on.” 

She threw her hand from a flat position between them to over her shoulder, hoping it would be enough to take him from his place. She _could_ touch him, but a sink of her heart became a reminder that it would be much too soon. It wouldn’t feel right after what she just did. 

There was a strange nostalgia as he came forward to her, as she stepped out of the hole in the wall to watch him exit; there was a certain- again unidentifiable- feeling in her chest as she saw him clutch her hoodie in his fingers and into his breast like she would with a stuffed animal. 

Oh gosh, she missed Love-a-Lot. Wait, she was an adult! 

…Wait again, who gives a shit? _Him?_

Nerves up and down her neck tingled with longing, remembering the sensation of holding something soft to her chest. It was like looking at herself…a really tall, slimy version of herself. Admittedly, her first reaction to seeing Sammy hold her disgusting hoodie was that _it was still hers!_

Even though she had discarded it along with every liquid that crusted its surface like tattoos detailing a hero’s journey- hers of horror-, it would always be against human nature to see someone hold one’s own possessions with such intimacy. 

He must have noticed this. 

The corners of her lips pulled back as they stood in the corridor, her shirt dangling over the cup of his hands in an offering. She gazed down at it, seeing it was infected with black and its mahogany deepened here and there with her own fluids; then she gazed up at him without moving her head, pupils touching the line of her eyelids. 

She had changed into her other shirt after all; it didn’t cover her arms quite as nicely, but a few moments of cold were better than carrying _that smell._ Even if she had to duck back in the room where she left him behind, it was worth it. 

…Did she really still want it? 

What was the right word for how the man with no face looked in front of her like this, the emotion he conveyed even without one? 

There was another bit of unescapable human nature that washed over her skin in lament- empathy. 

“You…you need it-… _more_ …” she stated with a squint. There were shallow depths to this kindness; it housed pity and mystification, and that was more audible than the generosity she had in this choice. 

The cartoon head tilted, seeming unsure. Hesitantly, she was compelled to reach up to him and slowly pat her hoodie in goodbye affirmingly, trying to ignore the way it felt under her fingertips. 

“…Ah,” he exhaled quietly. 

Maybe Sammy’s actions had been misinterpreted, because he still seemed unsure. Maybe he didn’t realize how he looked holding it? Well, at least this was better than whatever he was doing before; that sight led to a question: Was he always like this? 

…Oh boy. 

“I…” 

Sammy’s mask lay almost horizontally downward at the crusty fabric in his hands. He was overcome by…whatever that was earlier in the bathroom. She became impatient. 

“Hm?” The woman could sense he had a thought; soon she would deliberate if she regretted drawing it out into the open. 

“Forgive me,” he started in an airy sigh, “It’s been…so long since I’ve seen one of these garments,” he finished wistfully. Such a simple admission filled her to the brim with a newfound understanding, of an overwhelming realization. He hardly ever saw a _shirt._

_“He really DOES need it more...”_ was what echoed through her mind as she gestured him to the next room; there was no way to cease watching the way he stared at a small fade of color draping over his arms, like a treasure unburied in this black and white world. And then came the weight of recognizing this was the world was now hers, no shirts and all. 

Why was it that their only distraction from agony was more agony? 


	5. In the Presence of Monsters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.”_ – 1 Peter 4:9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some reason this chapter took more effort than usual. I hope it paid off!

It was so strange how she was playing the role of hostess in this world Sammy led her to. 

They sat across each other at the small table, each with a small cup of water in front of them. God knows how relieved she was earlier to find that at least _one_ of the three faucets in the bathroom supplied clean water, at least by purely visual standards. However, it was not a shared delight- sort of like offering a hamburger to a vegetarian, it seemed, because he hadn’t touched it once. 

_“You require things I don’t; I recall that much.”_

At the time this fact was revealed, the exhaustion of arguing and- well- entirely giving up to her fate had whisked away critical thinking. But now? She started to see it. Even as his head bobbed slightly up and down so humanly as he stared at the table, observing its many chips and scratches, he still held his glossy form. Sammy was a man- she assumed by now with only slight doubt- but to say he was fully so would mock his existence. 

They both seemed content to be silent, even as the discomfort of it all started to pile with a weight capable of breaking the table between them. And so she resumed what she was doing before, a flat pattern of roses rising to face her companion- the back panel of an opening into the rest of the universe. 

There was a change here. She glanced up from her phone once she saw in her peripheral that he sharply raised his whole body upward. Like a pulley, it made her heart sink. 

“Sammy?” 

She didn’t know what to say. He just seemed…eternally anxious, agonized; she selfishly wished it didn’t make her feel the same way. Heck, saying his name- something he didn’t know until he met her- probably made it worse. Her phone went face down on the table, the window of light covered by wooden drapes. 

He was standing up now, limbs outstretched as if…as if there was something in the room with them. She spun around to try to see it, but it was just them. It took her a full minute of looking wall to wall to realize the thing clawing at him must be within rather than around them. 

She had panic attacks before herself, and one almost overcame her then with the wisdom that her experience gave no valid proficiency in helping another. 

Just as she began to approach, hands in front of her but unsure what she’d even do with them, she saw he was looking down at the table. Maybe something was with them after all. 

* * *

“My sheep…!” 

He regressed in his vocabulary, overcome with the memories and sensations of seeing her bathed in luminescence the last time he left her alone. That…thing. That thing was there before, and it was the source of that capturing radiance. 

The knot in his chest was indescribable seeing her reach over to pick it up; it didn’t lift with her gentle words. 

“Sammy, Sammy…it’s okay.” She turned the thing to face him. “It’s okay.” 

It was a rectangle, smooth like glass and black like the pipes sewn through the maze of halls. There was a ridge around it where she gripped the thing in her fingers. It faced him like it had faced her, and so he shrunk back, expecting to be taken by the light as she had been before. 

…But nothing came. 

It was almost funny how quickly he dipped his head down to inspect it, bent at the stomach and craning his neck so his mask was parallel with its black wall. Finally, some words: 

“What…is this? What did it do to you?” A voice that shook with terror and amazement. 

She scoffed. “What?!” 

His chin tilted upward to look at her, but the angle was sharp enough that she could see his mouth through the hole of his mask, how it gaped and quivered. “It…enveloped you, my sheep. I saw…I saw…”

For once he didn’t have words to describe the unnatural visions of the studio. Little did he know that it was because it was not of the studio at all, but she started to grasp that in his place. 

* * *

It was a good call to save the long-winded explanation for later. Ah, how foolish she was to assume he wouldn’t at _least_ be inquisitive about a smartphone in a world that seemed like it was frozen in place long past, that in the darkness of the halls it looked like an angel glowing in her hands. Of course, her first reaction- the one he saw- was to notice how ridiculous such a belief was, but the more she thought…the more it made sense for him to feel that way. 

It made her feel guilty. This was the emotion left with her after assuring him that her phone was indeed safe, letting him hold it in his hands to inspect- oh so grateful none of him seemed to smear through the cracks. 

“Is it…under your control?” he asked in wonder without lifting his mask to face her, still very much enraptured with the object. 

“Uh-…” She didn’t really know how to react when you put it like _that._ “-I suppose you could say that.” 

Sammy finally looked her in the eye; she could almost sense him blink quizzically- if he could at all. And then, right in front of her, he pinched a corner of the phone to dangle it between the tips of his thumb and index finger. That made her frown in worry, but when he started to lightly toss it in the air was certainly much worse to watch. 

“HEY!” 

He was so startled that his catch faltered, and his arms swung fruitlessly as a _clunk!_ came from their feet. The forearms that failed their purpose stayed still in front of him, crossed, and his waist stayed hunched towards the ground. His head, however, began to lift with an agonizingly slow curve; Sammy stared at her in total silence. 

Now it was her turn to recoil back, suddenly remembering who this was in front of her. Sure, maybe things had gotten better- that kind of happens when you have no one else- but she still very much remembered the animosity; she was so hypnotized in flashbacks of the past day or two that she didn’t perceive what he was doing until it was in front of her nose. 

“I am…deeply sorry, my friend. Forgive my childishness,” he murmured quietly, seeming to ache with embarrassment. The phone delicately lay onto his palms as he cradled it momentarily and then hesitantly offered it to her. She’d be lying if she tried to say the way he held her stuff was totally normal. 

“It’s…it’s fine,” the woman said in a low voice as she took her pink phone back, “I overreacted for sure. No- no worries.” They both were so taken aback by the flinch of their hands touching once again that neither of them noticed it was a shared experience. 

Awkward yet again, as seemed to be their way. The woman decided it was her responsibility in this particular situation, as she was the most recent aggressor; she exhaled, lips slightly puckered with reluctance. Maybe it wasn’t the best time, but they finally appeared to have an opportunity for some long-awaited discussion. 

“Let’s-…let’s sit down, Sammy.” She pulled her lower lip in between her rows of teeth in contemplation briefly before addressing a lingering problem. “Is it alright that I call you ‘Sammy,’ by the way?” 

He didn’t say anything, but his body language was once again mastering the art of communication without conscious attempt, titling slightly downward in a clear admission: he wasn’t sure. Honestly, she couldn’t blame him. 

“You, uh, can decide in the future. I’m guessing its all-…it’s all a lot right now- a lot to think about.” There was temptation to include that she was experiencing the exact same thing, plausibly worse. But for sure, Sammy was fucked up in every way imaginable; the same vindictive sentiment of her tough times reminded her that he surely had them too…partially if not fully because of her as of late. 

Relief soaked her skin when he finally nodded, saying in a haunted drawl in that icy voice of his, “I have experienced…much revelation since we’ve met.” 

The man of shadow looked down at his arms. He was always fixated on them from the second they met. At first it was perplexing to her- a sign of instability- but now…it seemed to be an action of remorse. Sammy had to recognize his monstrous nature day after day, and so he would never cease to be enraptured by this gruesome reality. The presence of flesh and blood tore him apart, extinguishing the patience he maintained for years of merely waiting for his salvation- transmuting his distress at her sight into unbearable yearning. 

The woman was so unsure now of his nature and origins, but at least now there might be a reason the bathroom mirrors seemed to show him a ghost. He continued before she could ascend fully into the revelation of what his body did to him. 

“Time may be the only remedy Bendy will grant his prophet, no matter what works I perform in his name.” 

The woman nodded too in agreement, although the mention of his “lord” was enough the curdle alleviation into dismay. 

Finally, they once again sat across each other, not with the readiness but the awareness of the demons they had to face. 

_“Time and your assistance,”_ he didn’t risk adding as she rested her hand on the table; it was a casual, unthinking gesture that seemed to beckon him… He didn’t know what for. 

How surprised was he to find himself desiring it all the same, how ghastly he felt as he allowed it refuge within his soul. 


	6. Millennia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land.”_ \- Psalm 143:6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow I guess that last chapter was hard so this one could be easy! Or well, it didn't take as much effort to figure out. Two chapters in one week, nice!
> 
> I know I've been very dialogue heavy lately but I think it plays very well in this chapter. Please let me know what you think! I'm aware of all the tension and buildup to these moments. ;o

_“I…I don’t remember…”_

_“…I don’t know.”_

_“…”_

These were the basic iterations of Sammy’s only three answers for a very long while. Why was “Sammy Lawrence” written all over the music department? Why didn’t he recognize it as his name before? And most terribly, who did he used to be? …and so on. It seemed maybe she had more intuition of his identity than he, until- 

“What…happened to you?” 

At this point, it seemed like a failing interview, a list that had to keep going on and on even if they both suffered. This question felt so…rude; even though it was the one that directly impacted her the most- that her life was surrounded by the mysteries of the ink- it seemed cruel to say. She regretted doing so despite how much it meant to her. It wasn’t surprising when the tall figure on the other side of the table was utterly wordless once again, but it formed a great drop in her stomach to see his body was speaking for him. 

It was like when she first called him by his name; he started shaking and his shoulders lurched towards the sides of his head. She was just about to apologize- assuming he was in great distress from not being able to answer- when he began to utter: 

“The ink…it…took us. We had no choice.” 

One hand moved to hold his tired head while the other rested on the table to show him its wrist. The way he slumped was an unwritten story of pain, indescribable pain- a life of nothing but the darkness around them. Even as this new position showed the profile of her companion once again, she couldn’t see any features beyond his moving lips- and that barely so. 

“It…” She was beside herself trying to decipher his riddle. “It-… _took_ you?” She leaned over the table in astonishment. “You…were you…” She swallowed so she could spit out the incredible. “…human?” 

The wisp of vision she had of his face was enough to show his swift displeasure, his gritting teeth. It scared her all the same, but he was holding back the hottest of his fury at her ignorance. 

_“Yes.”_

Even though she suspected as much, its confirmation was enough to render her limp, sloping back into her chair breathlessly. 

Then, as she had dreaded before, he began to squeeze the fingers near his mask into a fist, shakes of trauma turning into that of incense. He tried to remember, he tried, but all he saw was- 

**Ink. Ink. Ink. Ink. Ink. Ink. Ink. Ink. Ink. Ink. Ink. Ink.**

A groan in agony that vibrated from his chest. 

A touch on his hand. 

“…That’s…that’s enough for now.” It’d be a fib to say she wasn’t utterly exhausted herself in this moment, and so she hoped her grip would remind him there was a world outside of memory…no matter how his skin felt. It lingered with her how little she cared in this moment despite knowing what he was made of. She blinked down at their hands and exhaled. 

“Let’s give you a break from all this. I shouldn’t have pushed you.” 

Sammy breathed in sharply as he emerged to the surface of reality; the sliver of his face disappeared, replaced by the false one of his master so he may have the power to look at her as she possessed him. 

Touch. Touch. Touch. 

Even though he began to obsess with it- how the idea of doing so made him foolishly hope her blood could transfuse through his fingers and once again beat this old heart- despite that or maybe even because of how deeply that rooted through his veins…- 

He had abrasively retracted his hand with a backward wobble of his head- a total denial of all temptation. The only reward was a voice that pierced his chest and pinned him to the chair at his back, leaving him paralyzed.

“I’m…I’m sorry.” 

He once again could only stare at his flesh as he strangled his own wrist, watching her own slither out of sight in the window of his forearms. This was the last thing he saw before ink washed over his eyes and blurred her into blackness. 

Not knowing what else to do, she left him to drown. 

* * *

Knees were pulled towards her stomach; it stung so bad. She was once again in the bedroom and once again had left him alone. The conflict boiled in her chest, wondering if trying to comfort him was wrong, if leaving him alone was wrong, or both simultaneously. 

Of course, it hurt her too to be denied the companionship she so desperately wanted to have again, even if it was with him. Even though he…oh gosh. 

There was such an incredible dissonance in her sudden judgement, seeing that the true misdeed he had purposely done- that grotesque confession of _sacrificing her_ \- was what he’d been trying to make up for. She winced as this bit into her; she shouldn’t- she shouldn’t forget he did that, but she kept pretending that he hadn’t poured himself out to her in the music hall, confessing he was wrong about his-…life. 

What must have been his entire known life. He left everything he had…so he could apologize to the person he hurt. It didn’t absolve him of his sins to her, of course, but he did the right thing from then forward. Her actions stung him because she was still stinging. 

Something sounded down the hall. She listened, then nothing more. All it did was stop her heart for a second, leading to realization that something needed to be done. She couldn’t live in agony like this. 

As she did in the orchestra room, she was resigned to pick herself up and journey for diversion. Sure, the trouble was that she had stared at the items in this room for a long time, but this was what she was driven to do to save herself. Something stood out in the background…something she didn’t notice before. 

Time seemed to skip because suddenly it was in her hand, smiling up at the giantess. 

“Hey li’l dude,” a hoarse but earnest greeting came from her throat. Agonizingly, she forced herself to smile at the Bendy toy; at first it was entirely ingenuine- a “fake-it-till-you-make-it” tactic that eventually worked, and soon the smile bubbled into soft laughter. She finally shed a single tear when its wrinkle reached her eyes. 

A shameful desire crept to her heart. She looked side to side as if there was something to hide, and then a gaze fell upon the smooth, black plush. It was the visage of the beings that haunted her, the ones that always watched, the ones that were her comrades. Her grin faded as she pressed the toy into her chest, trying to ignore the irony of it, trying to ignore that it wasn’t a person. 

She didn’t look well enough because the prophet was standing there. 

* * *

The visions yet again were indescribable. He knew it was something, because when he came to he felt colder than ever before. It took much effort to pick himself up from the chair, as if he’d been running for hours. Unknown to him, it was probably only a minute since she left- 

Since she left. 

Gone yet again, and he didn’t know what to do about it. He felt like tearing himself apart, it was so frustrating. Why was he like this?! _Why?!_

“Oh, ink demon…” he muttered, the hands leaning onto the table, curling their fingers, “Your shepherd can’t even care for one of your flock…” 

Just ahead of his clenched fists sat the treasure of the fallen. Inspiration sparked through his extremities as he reached to hold the phone within his hands. 

Purpose…in this new eon of uncertainty, maybe he still had a purpose… 

And so, he could never forget how black washed over him, obscuring the sights that had captured his soul forever and locked them away. He could never forget, but it was pushed away to make a path towards her. 

That brought them to the present moment, as the man approached with new resolve. 

“’Dude?’” 

Sammy saw her body tighten in surprise. Even though it was to be expected, it was still disappointing. Somehow, he had hoped that all would be miraculously well when he came back to her. Likewise, the woman hadn’t anticipated they’d meet together so soon after what she did; it was unclear if his quick return was an omen of healing or further troubles. Fortunately, her predisposition to share and describe overcame the heartache. 

In their desperation, the two accepted curiosity over apology. It was a welcome beginning to conversation…much needed contact, like warriors in combat comprehending their fight was for naught only after wounds started to gape. 

“Oh, Sa-…” The name was halted before it emerged fully; it took a second for her to reframe her speech. She noticed the way he quoted her, the perplexity in his voice. Ah, well…she _was_ strange after all. 

A nose slipped past the mass of hair as the oily being faced her back, surprised she had the strength to look at him so soon. It gave him…pleasure. Was that it? As it blended with puzzlement, he wasn’t sure what he felt. That word he caught- it was recognizable, but not one that came with a meaning. That made it an easy place to start over their interaction. He saw her profile dip down to look at something towards her ribs. 

The woman then realized how bizarre her use of language must be. She had a hunch it wasn’t a word he was exposed to, at least in this form. 

“It’s uh…a familiar and casual term for ‘person.’” To both of their reliefs, when the turn of her body completed it revealed the genuine smile had returned. Sure, it was small, accompanied by raw sadness, but it was there and granted them peace. 

At least for that second. 

“I use it- uh- pretty liberally,” she quickly added with an embarrassed smirk. In good humor, she pointed at the doll she held to her chest, who she deemed as definitely not a “person.” Almost in silliness, its head dipped down to show Sammy its own grin as well- perfect comedic timing. Ease radiated from the man at this sight; she noticed a small tilt and forward lurch of the head. So unfortunately, she had the comfort and encouragement to keep talking. 

“Lots of my friends do, too, so I guess it’s just how I talk now!” She shrugged, eyelids tightening with the rise in her cheeks. “Millennial speech and all that.” A short chuckle emerged with the last word as if to dismiss her own ridiculousness. 

… 

“Mill…” he began slowly, “…en all?” He tilted his head further, still enveloped in the light mood. It was clear in his tone that he was confused, however. 

She rolled her eyes not in exasperation but thought. She didn’t stop to ponder why this word needed to be explained; she simply desired to do so. 

“It’s like-,” she began in a high pitch, the word “like” drawn out to procrastinate until the proper idea was captured. “It’s like, a word for kids born between 1990 and 1999, I think.” 

Dead. Silence. Everything they had happily accepted fled their presence, like birds sensing the first chills of winter. Nothing about him changed in the worst way possible. He didn’t make a noise; he didn’t move. But she saw, and she did those things for him as the pain in her stomach returned. The doll would have fallen to the floor if her natural state wasn’t a tender grip of the hand. 

“Sammy?” No one cared she said his name. The great consequence of this moment quaked her voice, overwhelmed her with abrupt wisdom. “How long have you been here?” 

And they were suddenly too tired to say anything else, questions circling the air like clouds of smoke that choked their words. Even if they both didn’t know, _they knew._ Then in unspoken unity, they decided it was too much. 

Their hearts sank together- one with the realization that time existed outside of the studio while the other comprehending time had stopped. It was a sickening truth all too heavy to bear, and so two heads hung down with this burden. With his height, the man ended up looking down upon her and could directly observe her pain sheltering under his own. 

He was the one that decided to hold her hand this time, selfishly ignoring what she must have endured to have his horrible body contact hers. It was still such a terrible instinct, but it was all he had, the only thing left in him…so it was done. In his other hand was the remnant of heaven- a cellphone to her- that had come to remind them of the hell they wandered. In her own second palm, the dusty sneer of Bendy looked down upon his gift to her, approving of his prophet’s obedient return. 

This moment needed to pass…Please let it pass… 

Unbelievably, he felt her press into his palm as she began to cry. Her voice crawled through the walls and encased them, and he understood she might as well be crying for the both of them. She accepted then in this epoch of afflictions that even though he had much to make up for, his apologies were certainly true. Thus was the beginning of reconciliation, of true middle ground. 

“Please don’t let go,” someone whispered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of course I have an obligatory "original character cuddles a Bendy plush" scene. Of course I do. I've been imagining this for months; it'd need to be pried from my cold, dead hands.


	7. Shape, Sound, and Sincerity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You are my hiding place; You preserve me from trouble; You surround me with songs of deliverance.”_ \- Psalm 32:7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first chapter I've had the energy to write since I got in a pretty terrible car accident. Eventually I just felt like writing how I felt through Sammy and the OC, and it really still rings true that the purpose of this fic is to explore things within myself and how emotions shape the world. School has been wild and taken up a lot of my time, so thanks for being patient if you've been waiting on this. It was very cathartic to write.

You get in a car accident. Metal and wire and glass everywhere- horrible, horrific, terrible, terrifying. _Alone._ Let’s assume you’re lucky enough to make it out physically unscathed, not even a cut; you’ll still never forget how it makes you feel. There’s a chance every time you get behind the wheel again, pass by the spot on the highway where your car split the guard rail in two, or even if you see a car- there’s a roll of the dice how tight your chest will clench this time and how much your heart physically aches like the time it happened. Once again, the car is spinning and the same debris from before flies into your face in hopes of destroying you, onslaughts of the phantom of your past. 

Swirling in anxiety, drowning in doubt. Someone can only take it for so long. There’s only so many times someone can live through it over and over again, and the first time alone could have killed you. This is the time where beings find how powerful they truly are. This is when they find their souls- their joys, their fears, their traits, their wounds. 

There’s only so long before you become human again. 

* * *

The water traced down her fingers after it was thrown gently to her skin. The sound it made echoed in the porcelain, staining the old yellow basin with a trickle of black among the otherwise clear liquid. Its presence forced a sigh of dismay, beridding her of the consolations of truly clean drinking water. As the layer of dust and ink the studio painted onto her washed away little by little, Sammy saw there were some things that wouldn’t abandon her. The folds under her eyes remained darkened, and a row of brown dots lined from her jaw to her forehead. She was a constellation of heavens he hadn’t the blessing to see… 

…Yet. Looking upon her was a reminder that dreams do come true, and they certainly will with Bendy’s gracious hand. 

The man took great care standing next to the mirror rather than in front of it; maybe he was vulnerable in her full view, unable to hide how carefully he watched, but it was preferred over the slashing stare of his own melting body before him if he had stood behind her instead. He uncrossed his arms as she lifted her head to breathe in once more, and suddenly black fingers were obstructing his view. 

Sammy hadn’t touched her yet, thankfully, before he discovered what he was doing. As the back of his hand obstructed the dots on her face and their accompanying eye, the other eye looked upon him. She was too tired, too numb to flinch yet again, but the man eventually pulled back all the same. Even in her acceptance of him- of his upsetting existence, his unholy form- he still felt unsuited to touch her again, at least not so soon. 

“You…you have some left on your face, my friend,” was his excuse. A true one, but it was an excuse. 

After a second of blank silence, the woman minutely shifted her head to look in the mirror again. It was clear now there were still definitely stains left, and to his concern they didn’t fuzz a bit when she smoothed her fingertips over them. Shoulders lifted and dropped with a blink, and she somehow looked more tired than before. 

“I think I got everything I can, Sammy.” He didn’t blame her in this moment for some reason, for her casual reference to him by a name he hardly knew. It brought things upon him- things that were certainly his- and so came the admission of his ownership of a “Sammy.” How truly terrible was it that he knew it? The answer was “very,” of course, but as the woman’s look rested upon him again, it somehow drowned in the deafening noise her mortality blared around him. How could such a solemn face make him feel…so, so much? 

“Did you hear me, Sammy?” 

A soft “ah” came from his throat in surprise, awakening him from the fantasy she was, the dream of being human so close in his grasp. “…Yes,” the man managed to say, “…My apologies.” 

Her shoulders created a slope as one shrugged and the other drooped, leaving the bottom of her neck grazing the lifted side. He could have imagined it- it could have simply been her supple cheek pushing the rest of her face as her shoulder touched it- but a corner of her mouth lifted at him. 

“It’s okay.” 

It was the quietest voice that had ever emerged from the woman since they met. It was unsettling, and yet-… 

Her smile widened and reached her eyes. 

-…and yet so relieving. 

“Let’s go sit down, Sammy.” That name again. That name. 

She slipped out the doorway ahead, and he obediently followed. 

His name…his name… 

* * *

Realization came upon him as she led him to the living room yet again. Sammy saw the woman standing full height a fair distance ahead of him. Hands fell on her round hips and the flesh underneath easily gave way, gentle and weak to the pressure of her fingers. A line curved around her neck as it turned to look behind at him. A word…there was a word for this…What was it? 

His head bobbed up and down over her before unburying lost knowledge of the world above. “You’re…fat.” 

She laughed- she outright laughed, the entirety of her body bouncing with her voice, an amplifier of emotion that confirmed his statement. It was so much different than just a second ago; she changed so fast before his eyes simply by stating observations. How absurd. 

“That’s-…” the woman began before being interrupted by one last chuckle, “-that’s a funny thing to say out of the blue!” Almost in agreement- maybe to express agreement- she gently placed a hand on her stomach. “Yeah, I am.” There was one last pulse of a grin before it shrunk to a small smile for good. She still seemed so exhausted, but at least she wasn’t quite so still. It didn’t seem to suit the nature of such an easily moved body, he surmised as he saw the way it caved into even the gentlest of thumps from her fingertips as they lay upon her abdomen. 

“I’ll uh…I’ll probably shed a few pounds while I’m here!” Just as suddenly as it came, the joy drained from her face in the reality of this joke. “…Oh. Oh no.” 

Her spine lurched forward a little and could be seen trembling her torso with fear, with sickness. She led herself back down to the chair, clutching her stomach not so gently one last time before laying face down against the surface of the table. 

And again, how absurd. Maybe that was the word that described the woman best; it certainly was the one that described how he felt around her. He had solidified once and for all just moments ago that he would care for her, would indeed care for the lamb that Bendy found astray. He was rewarded only with two things: the first being the pain her presence brought- the torture of knowing that flesh and blood still could be among the ink, and yet not suitable for him even in his great patience; the second was her volatility, the way this woman pried, demanded, and sobbed for and against him. It was an inexpressibly uncomfortable, strenuous test his lord asked of the prophet. 

Leaning against the rim of the table, in front of his lame sheep, sat a familiar face. Somehow, he had neglected to acknowledge the presence of a banjo not his own that had been in their counsel since the moment they took refuge here. 

His own chair creaked as he leaned into it, carrying in his arms an old- or rather the duplicate of- an old friend. By second nature, he plucked the finest of the strings- a bit out of tune, it was. Sammy adjusted the tightness and plucked again. Better. 

A corner of her brow lifted from behind a layer of hair sprawled onto the table. He noticed her noticing him, of course, but all he could think to do was move on to the next string, and then the next, and then the next. By the time the banjo was properly tuned, her full face rested underneath her arms, looking up upon the musician in weary wonder as she laid the front of her body across the table between them. 

There was so much anticipation up until this point. Of course, she was enraptured by the sound itself, and that led to the mystery of what he would do next. “Play the banjo” somehow wasn’t the answer for her; it was going to be more magical than that. So otherworldly was it to hear music, even if it was one note at a time down a scale. 

Sammy, on the other hand, was an anxious wreck enveloped by his own unwillingness to turn back. Of course, he was delighted to play- he always had been, as this was what his lord desired- but…but as each string sung out, he realized more and more it wasn’t him he would be playing for now. Trouble was, he hadn’t imagined playing at all, but it was clear as glass he gave her reason to expect otherwise. What a dilemma. 

“…” Sammy intended to speak but was blank. It was, indeed, a very specific kind of emptiness, however. This was the space he was supposed to address her. “…” he couldn’t speak again, unsure how to go on. 

“…” she countered, glancing down at his tarry appendages over the banjo. The hypocrite waited with baited breath, with her unconscious eagerness of what lay in his hands. Sammy decided upon a trade, a long awaited one. 

“Despite how much trouble we’ve gotten ourselves into over my name,” Sammy said, lifting his hand from the banjo strings to create fist and support his chin almost teasingly, “…you have so carefully ensured I would never hear yours.” 

The woman turned red immediately, and Sammy felt a strange blend of playful vengeance and true spite as he could visibly see recognition penetrate every pore of her skin and change its hue. It was too soon to smile himself, even in its great irony, but he finally said what needed to be said and it gave him solace. Awkwardness would always rise before it waned, as would humiliation and hurt feelings. Honestly, for all he knew, maybe she didn’t need a name; the purpose of this wasn’t to attain her name but to transfuse his frustration. And so, it was more than he expected when she finally spoke. 

“I’m…I’m so sorry. It’s…it’s…I’m Francine.” 

His entire form tilted in surprise, looming over the instrument in his lap rather than holding it while keeping his head parallel with hers. She couldn’t read him, but he read her; Sammy caught the flashes of emotion over her face, the sharp spikes of shame at being caught in her hypocrisy. …Guilt; he saw that. He leaned back once more in his chair, gaping mask still pointed her way. He was satisfied. 

“Francine,” he hummed. Francine nodded slightly in reply, and so his hand curled over the strings once more. “Well…” His head titled at her expressively. “I mustn’t keep you waiting any longer, should I?” 

And as music finally filled the apartment and sounds of beauty rather than revile swept around them, he quietly recognized how swiftly he had forgiven her, how soothing it was to feel a slight vibration in his seat as she tapped her foot to the rhythm, how her quick changes of mood somehow left him more solid than before.


	8. Daniel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”_ \- Hebrews 13:1-2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is _sincerely_ the most fun I've had writing a chapter. I'm SUPER excited for what's coming up here and in the chapter right after, so I hope that you love it as much as I do!!!!

The newly named beings were content for a moment, even in their unimaginable turmoil. They had each other. It wasn’t much, but they had each other. 

How long was it before they both secretly started to stir, to long for something else? As always, each had a quite different reason than their counterpart. The woman’s was simple: the apartment was small, and she was increasingly unsettled the longer they stayed. Maybe it was the sharp taste of salt staining her throat with each can of bacon soup, only to be quenched by water that only sometimes was without a grey stream of ink from the faucet. Maybe it was how the walls seemed to close in, growing tighter and tighter as she walked down the short corridor between the three rooms. Maybe it was the collage of monstrosities she found tucked behind a corner, making her scream so loudly that Sammy ran to her side. She noticed the way he pulled her back, the manner he dragged her into his side with a gasp of his own, the tone in his voice when he saw she was only surprised by a collection of pictures upon the wall and apologized for having grabbed her with no purpose, how he forgot to scold her for screaming at all. 

Francine noticed how he seemed to stir, too, and it added to her anxiousness. 

The novelty of recent events was of great distraction, but even the personification of everything he ever wanted couldn’t cease his yearning, his prayers. Sammy had a routine for decades after all, a well-worn path that felt so deeply unnatural to stray. His worship was his life. Despite feeling that somehow, certainly, all this with the woman was for Bendy and done in his name, it still ached so much to tread the waters of the unknown. 

Sammy had hoped in vain that strumming the banjo they had found would be enough to quench his fires as they rose from the ashes; it was not satisfying to his own standards of faith. As this dawned upon him over the period of rest, it drifted beyond his heart and the woman could see his clenched fists and hear his soft groans. The murky varnish of demons couldn’t smother the anguish of his soul, even as it crawled over and inside every inch of his body. 

How long had it been? Maybe a day. Maybe a few. It was enough for the two disciples to hunger too irresistibly for something they’d seen before- the very same thing. 

“It’s time,” he suddenly spoke. The woman found Sammy in front of her as she awoke on the gurney, her eyes squinting since they were still unused the such a dark, shiny figure covering so much of her vision. 

She shifted one of her arms to lift herself just a little, unwilling to fully come back from much needed rest. “…H…huh?” 

The prophet’s mask stared down upon her; even as it looked nothing like the **being itself,** what that face represented was still hard to take in as it hid someone she thoughtlessly wanted to accept. Francine had a knack for reading his body language- had no choice in the matter, honestly- but she only caught an inkling of an emotion: that he was determined. 

“The believers must honor their savior.” This statement rung so fervently, despite it being recited so, so many times in his life. It was a psalm that would never lose its meaning. He noticed the scrunch of the cloth under her fingers in nervousness, and so he was aware it required elaboration. “I’m going back to the domain of hymns, the…place we were before, where I offer the ink demon my prayers.” She could only assume he meant the music hall. She physically perked up at this idea; it was the only room that had truly brought her _comfort._ She could easily feel again how mesmerized she was surrounded by the instruments, how it reminded her of home. This sentiment was enough to ignore what the earlier statement of his could mean. And just as she thought all this, he spoke once more. 

It was a plea. In her loud internal conversation, she hadn’t absorbed the great pause, the great worry and hesitation of his that took the air and drenched it with disquiet; it was dropped upon her and made her stomach sink. 

“My dear sheep… Promise me you won’t leave your shelter while I’m away.” 

And with that, her lightened mood was swallowed up by loss- the loss of a possibility she only just discovered she had. And just as abruptly, she didn’t know how to argue. There was something about him, something unsettling and apprehensive. It was less that she respected his request and more that fear of the unspoken left her obedient, so she gave him a nod. 

Sammy left her behind to continue blissful sleep- escape from reality- but as soon as the only door she hadn’t touched clicked in the distance, she was helpless to a will that demanded she run to his side. Obedience waned into a desperate need for security as soon as she no longer felt his dread. 

Francine was unknowingly running towards what Sammy was most afraid of in this world of fears. 

* * *

“Hello?!” 

_Hello……hello……_

As she stepped out of the heavily locked saferoom and called out to him in that boisterous yell, a welcome returned from the walls in her own voice. She frowned when another didn’t join it. 

“SAMMY?!” 

_Sammy! Sammy…! Sammy…_

The echo came from a corridor to her left, and she could see it quickly turned a sharp corner. He must have been just beyond, and so she ran that way. Around the next bend, the hall was empty. Ignoring the thump in her chest, Francine decided to turn the next corner as well. Nothing. Again. Nothing. Again. 

… 

Lost. 

It was only then that the heaving of the machinery around her was finally heard, their sputters and coughs pounding into her until it put more breath into her than own lungs. As the woman hyperventilated to the beats of metal, direction was forgotten, and she didn’t know which way she came from. So stupidly, so illogically, she then saw the darkness ahead and went into it. It was no longer known if she intended to find him or to turn back; Francine simply wished to leave this loudness, and that instinct threw her into the den of lions. 

* * *

_Bjn-n-n…_

“Tsk!” Sammy mumbled under his breath. No matter how he fiddled, he could not repeat the clarity of sound in his own banjo that the borrowed one of the apartment possessed, the sound _this one_ used to possess as well. _“That girl…”_ he thought with a strike of venom. And just as he did, the emptiness, the quietness of the recording room surrounded him, penetrating from all sides. Not even the searchers wanted to give him company, as they often did. He was truly alone. Sammy looked at the broken instrument upon his lap; even in its pathetic state, it told him to not blame her for how it pained…how Sammy pained, as well. 

Indeed, the fire still burned inside him. Despite being where the prophet knew he belonged until the days of suffering passed, it wasn’t enough. How cruel it was for him to have to endure this feeling. How…selfish he was for thinking at first that he didn’t deserve this. 

Sammy felt this way because as the comprehension consumed his suddenly unskilled hands, a sensation emerged all around him where the silence used to be. They called. Just as she was here with him last, the old strings called for her. They called for someone new to praise in their lord’s name. To him, it was as if he was being shunned for refusing to bring her back, but he knew it was really he that longed for her revitalizing presence. 

He was aware how despicable it was to want that of her, but even the shame of asking her to risk safety again wasn’t enough to stop him. The banjo was placed down yet again as the inevitable reunion was set in stone. He dragged his feet to the exit, and Sammy prayed this was really what Bendy would want of him; heaven knows what would happen to her if not for the company of her shepherd. 

* * *

Finally. Finally, there was light. Her heavy breath was taken by what waited. A giant- a…a _MASSIVE_ thing was in the biggest room she’d ever seen in her life. It created a noise, a splash somewhere down below where the cascade of ink fell to. The waterfall of Bendy, surrounded by him in every corner of her sight, was finally enough for her to realize. 

_“This isn’t the way.”_

Her chest thumped and shook her fingers as the Heavenly Toys stared at her, as if she interrupted a party uninvited. They stared, they stared, they stared- 

“This isn’t the way!” She finally managed to persuade herself and began to step back. However, something then invited her to stay. 

She couldn’t make out the words, but something was behind the falling river that centered the room. A staircase by the right side twirled behind into the undiscovered, the only spot she couldn’t see. There was another, too, but decay and the rot of ink seemed to cause it to collapse into unclimbable, splintering wood. Francine’s eyes twitched down at her hands clasped into her chest. She was reminded of something by this sound he was hearing- she remembered when Gabby first went missing and her hands tried to hold herself just as they were now. Francine closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and listened. 

Beyond her flooding pulse was the sound of someone else lost and hurt as herself. That was enough for her to bury her doubts and charge ahead through the chamber of watchful toys. 

* * *

Gears sputtered here, too, as Francine came to the workshop. Ah, well…she was _kind of_ right all that time ago, she supposed with sarcasm. She still didn’t know the purpose of all these pipes and the ink each seemed designed to carry, but her naïve belief when she first entered the studio that they were related to some sort of production line was now affirmed. The toys across the belt smiled teasingly, but she took it in stride. After all, this distraction helped her calm down and take direction. 

She closed her eyes to listen again but didn’t need to. It was evident now without concentration that the voice was certainly beyond the mess of toy shelves blocking her path, much closer than before. Francine was so frightened, so apprehensive now that she could hear it clearly; she doubted the shrieks in her heart that reminded her of Gabby. Surely, if there was someone else here, she shouldn’t interfere; she should run away in terror and hope they never cross paths. 

As if it could hear the worries clambering inside Francine, the voice finally reached above a murmur and became comprehensible, forcing her eyes to shoot open. 

“Hello...” 

This word again welcomed her, but the echo this time was unnaturally close after, almost unified. It must have been the thick walls that separated she and this person that distorted their sound. There was a great, great pause in this speech that seemed to twist the room around her; she finally leaned onto a worktable to steady herself. Suddenly, it came upon her that this wasn’t a monologue- it was a conversation. And so, she needed to steady her voice too, at least enough so to speak at all. 

“H-…h-…” Oh dear god. Francine was choking on her own words, too overwhelmed by the presence of someone beyond the door to even interact with them. A cold sweat ran over her forehead. 

“My, my…you seem so… _scared.”_ The last word was different than the last; it was sweeter, a different tone- like an entirely different person. Francine somehow decided to try replying once more. 

“Y-…yes,” she panted, and suddenly the rest tripped out of her mouth in panic. “I’m so scared! I- I’m-…” 

Francine stopped herself, not just shameful of her vulnerability but realizing she was confessing to this person she didn’t know- actually thought _couldn’t_ even exist. There was a few seconds of noiselessness where Francine finally grasped why she was drawn deeper into this cavern of playful terrors. Sammy never talked about anyone else. He never acted like there was another truly sentient being besides himself. They seemed to be alone in this world, two beings destined to walk side by side in the shadow of Bendy, waiting for his mercy. The shock in this moment hadn’t yet laid way to the necessary questions, and so every utterance beyond the wall came as those of divinity, of unreal and amazing truths. 

_“Why don’t you open the door, so we can finally meet? Th_ ere should be a lever just outside that’ll move these shelves between us.” 

Francine was getting a headache from how her cheeks kept pushing against the corners of her eyes in distress and disbelief, but she still managed to push past her stunned state to twist and face where she came from. Unwittingly, she lifted herself up so her full weight was on her feet, and then the woman trudged to trace the cables on the floor that led to the switch this person had promised. 

As a thick _clunk!_ ran through the walls after it was pressed, Francine’s palms went back to her side. One leg turned to lead her back, but the other was glued to the floor as her gaze finally had enough lucidity to reveal that just outside the staircase, some of the ink puddles on the floor were moving. 

“Oh, you were very noisy coming to see little old me, weren’t you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's about time I showed the angel some overdue respect.


	9. In Excelsis Deo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Daniel answered, 'May the king live forever! My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions.'"_ \- Daniel 6:21-22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: I have become aware that there are canonically two staircases at the heavenly toys, so I have edited the side closest to the switch to be entirely unusable in the previous chapter. Although unlike much of my fic it doesn't fit the canon environment, the place has been worn more heavily with decay and the rage of many, many ink monsters since Henry was there, and so I feel its a suitable change.

Francine couldn’t feel herself anymore. The numbness that came with the discovery of concealed camaraderie was overwhelmed with a new sort of emptiness- the void of overwhelming dread. Indeed, the half-man had returned in its full splendor, sliding through the crowd of toys, its remnants disappearing only seconds after detaching again and again from the stub where its legs should be. In and out of eternity, the being splashed before her very eyes. 

It splashed right for her, hungry with desire; it sensed blood. 

Not only that, there was…something else. A shifting motion stroked her vision from the corner of the gallery. And as she saw it wasn’t only _one_ beast that cursed these halls after all, she finally screamed. There was no way for the woman to escape. Her palms gripped the bars that lined the platform, hair falling over her face as she leaned her entire torso over, a desperate measurement of height. No, she’d break her legs if she jumped from all the way up here, and broken wood of the collapsed staircase waited below like pointed spears. 

A sound came to her left, and Francine spotted in full view that the first damned creature was dragging itself along the staircase- the only uninterrupted staircase down. Cheeks grimaced forcefully and pinched her eyes so tight that it was a grin; as she sobbed, it almost sounded like a laugh was scratching her throat. This was insanity. And just as she decided to do the insane as well, she heard someone. Soon it would propose something that was even madder than what she had in mind. 

Thank goodness she had a guardian angel after all. 

“My dear…” Thick like velvet, a voice lingered through the walls behind her back and placed itself squarely, resolutely upon her shoulders. “Please…there’s no need to hurt yourself.” 

Francine hardly balanced over the edge of the railing now, hair swaying all around her like branches of a willow tree as she faced the certainly unfeeling, uncaringly solid floor far below. She heard the groans, the roars of spirits waiting to devoir her. To her horror, the second monster on the floor below had chosen to be more direct; it seemed to move closer- 

Oh of course, it was moving to position itself where she’d surely fall and break to pieces, as if it could swallow her whole like a mere bit of popcorn it tossed in the air for its own amusement. Past the bellows of the unholy, she caught the siren’s call again. 

“You only need to do as I have after all this time- what you and I are both capable of, unlike these horrid, _horrid_ slugs.” A little bit of that second person slipped in again, frantic with disturbance, but it seemed unimportant to consider now compared to inevitable death. "It's so simple. It's ridiculous how utterly stupid they are!” 

They certainly didn’t seem to be as they came for her life. 

Francine hugged the wooden bar tight into her entire body, legs wrapping around the vertical beams as she was desperate not to fall- desperate to not let go into either direction, even as the one she was currently in did her no service. For certain, the one below would kill her, but the one to her left was moaning- moaning just as loudly for her demise as it came closer…and closer…and cl- 

“Please! Help me, PLEASE! Oh, oh _GOD!-_ “ and she only thereafter screeched meaningless, terrorized howls to someone that waited beyond reality. 

The mortal had finally called upon divine intervention, a cry clawing through the shrouds of agony. And finally, it touched the heart of its beholder. One could almost hear the smirk in their next testament. 

“My little cherub,” they began in a giggle heavy with amusement, “you nee _d to sing.”_

The sound of the searchers was strained out of her ears in disbelief. 

“…I need to _wha- AAH!!! ”_

And she felt once again a cold, unnatural touch grip her ankle, just as there was the moment she arrived in the studio. What- what was it doing?! Oh, shit. Oh SHIT! It wasn’t just yanking her down with its inexplicably cold arms- it was-… 

A screech echoed again as its ink warped around her skin and bone, uncontained by humanly limits, attempting to make what has _hers_ become _its._

Suddenly a strong, reflexive kick came crashing down, and it was utterly regretful. The hand that enveloped her was subsequently torn apart, drips of black scattering all around like a gunshot spraying murky blood. A crime scene blew around her body and covered her in speckles of bitter, reeking death. Coughs came naturally, too, not just to catch her breath but to reject the taste of ink that flew into her open mouth. Briefly she squinted her eyes, and surely, she must have missed some dark, incredible instant of deviltry in doing so; when they opened, the half-man was merely staring up at where their flesh used to join, beholding what was left of its arm. 

She caught the last split second where it finished reforming, good as new. 

Yet another scream was accompanied by yet another tickled laugh behind the wall. 

“We won’t be able to meet if you don’t listen to me.” The sugary one then rose once more. _“Sing!”_ And they drew out the last word slow and smooth in demonstration. 

Abruptly, the oily thing changed before it could try to gnaw at her again. 

It’s “head” lifted, and it turned in each and every direction; the searchers would never cease their namesake, but this time it was a draw to something besides the intoxicating whiffs of mortality the woman hauled throughout the entrails of the studio. The one that nipped her feet sensed something, and it captivated its very being at the drop of a pin. Initially she feared what this authority may be, and a tense moment of silence stirred between them. Eventually, she understood what to do, and she immediately grew to be resentful for its total denial of reality. 

Not that she had much choice. 

The sound from her lips quivered as her very soul did. Words subdued all in the chamber- so small and quiet, and yet the only ones heard. The only ones that mattered, it seemed, to the searchers. 

One of Francine’s eyes managed to push past her fear, and she witnessed the beast before her slacken. Indeed, she glimpsed in the horizon of her sight, too, that the one below had stopped raising its arms to the heavens- to its prey- and was now merely a drop on the floor in the presence of something beyond its comprehension. 

And so she kept on, unknowing when to stop nor what would happen once she did- if her scratchy refrain even held them at bay at all. It was all so ridiculous...so gravely ridiculous as it churned the blood in her veins. Only a few lines into this song- this passion of worry- the voice from beyond returned, and it beckoned in the smoother of its two hums, “There’s one of my Little Miracle Stations in the front of the room- hide there. GO!” It was a command harsh in either impatience or concern, and for now just as the voices were indistinguishable, so were these two emotions. 

Francine found herself unquestionably abiding by this savior, unhinging her body from the wooden railing and still engaging in this hymn upon her tongue; her feet joined the floor so terribly close to the swarming flesh of the monster she’d been coached to enrapture. She pondered desperately what the thing would do once she inched away, if she even found the power to do so within muscles rigid with adrenaline and unease. There were no eyes in its constantly collapsing sockets, and yet its gaze stung like wasps at her every move. 

…It let her pass. 

The song lined the border of the stairs like flowing cloth as it wistfully led her to the trenches of perdition; the voice in the wall had passed the reigns of these creatures to her own throat so it may live on to scream another day. Despite how she shook- how many notes she missed as squeaks and gasps of agony fell in tandem with the drum of searchers’ watching and shifting, entirely disinclined to chase as before- it was still remarkable to all who listened. 

And it was truly to _all_ who listened. 

Roughened wood stroked into her left palm as Francine breezed slowly over the rail at her side, beginning to descend into the lounge haunted by the many faces of Bendy, circling the liquified ghosts that pierced her with their mesmerization to make way to a box against the wall, a label etched across its door. Such appreciation wasn’t a compliment when one dreaded being eaten alive at any moment, however. 

What was this melody? The being above had never heard it before, but they could still feel its nadirs with intensity, and they gradually became…moved. How sad was it that this was the song that came to the human most naturally- that in her great distress and foreboding, it only spoke of how alone she was in the gutters of her heart. And just like that, their plans for her became so much more meaningful in this moment. 

Something was in the wind, tragedy at hand, and she couldn’t stand by him…whoever “he” was. It made the one behind the shelves sicken with sudden, unexpected grief…with understanding. They had felt this before, too- overcame it every waking moment so they may become better, stronger, more _beautiful…_ and yet could still claim this ache this like it was yesterday. Was it yesterday? Oh, how delightfully disgusting it can be to not know where the paths carved by immortality lie. 

Regardless, the sounder from beyond the toymaker’s gears lamented as Francine did, that never ending craving, grieving, begging for another soul to come for their own so they may suffer together. 

“Maybe it won’t be that way for long,” was the inner musings of a life perpetually lost to the depths of their own quarantine. 

* * *

Mellowed groans eventually wavered and fell out of existence like raindrops down a sewer drain. Hesitantly, she pressed her eyes towards the slit of radiance that fell into the Little Miracle Station, and at the sight ahead every ounce of her began to tilt to the sides of the box in release; a magically dreary tune she memorized long, long ago finally faded after a few full iterations of its verses, staining her tongue with a hue of nostalgia. Remarkable- utterly remarkable it was like this…that this was all that occurred. Everything that happened was unbelievable, from start to end, and it left Francine exasperated with shock as she lay there in the dark haven. 

Her eyes closed with weariness, and similar as when she first came to this giant room, a muffled voice arrived in her ears. She then remembered how this all began. Truth be told, she was unnerved to her core; within this world of impossibilities, what was before her was its own contradiction. The way Sammy described things to her, this…- _They…-_

The person up ahead…shouldn’t exist. 

Unanimously, words of velvet and nectar rang once more, not only beckoning Francine but reminding them both of their promise, and that was enough. Yes, she had firmly decided they will finally meet, and so the door creaked open to release the woman to the hell of angels. 

* * *

The row of shelves had separated, pearly gates yellowed with rot. What sat ahead was an engulfing shade tinted by grey boxes; their glow trickled to the edges of this tiny room and revealed very little, but it was enough. In generosity towards her anxious soul, maybe it contained only what she could handle at once. The visage of another cartoon raised their hand on the screens, asking the woman to join the song drifting in and out of faded stereos. Straight in front of her, their personification balanced the large frame between them. Tall and towering as they stood upon a pedestal crafted by decades of refinement, the one behind a shattered window looked down upon the mortal somehow in both casual condescendence and unadulterated mercy. 

Francine saw that she and them had pulled their jaws back in unanimous mystification, but the shadows couldn’t hide that theirs was jagged with unfathomable bumps and ripping muscle. It made her flinch back, but the being didn’t respond in inevitable pain, what she must have imagined the agony would be to have your face torn like that; they merely looked…disappointed, sad as they witness someone with the wholeness they desired and deserved look upon all their life’s effort like an undeserving wretch. 

As the vocalists basked in each other’s preposterous glory, there somehow came a simple politeness that seemed to have escaped she and Sammy before. 

“Who… who are you!?” 

Only one of their eyes crinkled properly in response, upper lid lowering in tenderness. The other gaped like an open sore, oozing tar into the shredded wounds of their left cheek, hollowed with trial and error. It was unfeeling, and yet it filled Francine with an unbearable emotion. 

“My _po_ or de _ar,”_ a choir of two emerged from black lips parted down the middle with gory perfection, smiling slightly at one end and unable to cease scowling with the other. The woman finally understood that it wasn’t the broken glass separating she from them that sliced what she saw into pieces. 

“I’m Al _ice Angel!"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've heard it, you probably recognized immediately I'm referring to Sally's Song from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Why? Because it's the first song I memorized years ago to sing to myself, so it comes most naturally to me. A little cheesy, but I was a cheesy kid.


	10. The Knight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Deliver those who are being taken away to death, and those who are staggering to slaughter, oh hold them back.”_ \- Proverbs 24:11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is...by far the longest chapter almost 4000 words versus my average of 2300. I considered splitting it to parts, but it feels best together. Might make up for it by making the next one shorter. Enjoy!

Someone found a door heavy with locks wide open with no one in sight. He heard a mutter in the distance, the machinery down the hall muting a scream. 

As Sammy started to run as fast as he could, he finally touched upon the total panic and vexation of a word the woman had uttered many a time: 

Shit. 

* * *

“I…” 

There was so, so much Francine couldn’t fathom that had arrived regardless. The smile ahead had widened, a portal that housed two souls. Who is this? … _Why_ is this? How can they possibly stand before her? How do they even _exist?_

Surely, this one was different than the prophet- much more solid, the woman observed. The only sign of molding was the pliable stretches of flesh that clawed into the left side of their face. Alice Angel’s meticulous sculpting had paid off, in that sense, and hid most of an eternity of scarring, mutilating surgery. Besides that? 

Alice saw the mortal’s head lift up and down and its eyes shudder with awe. They responded with tender pity. 

“My cherub,” the cartoon began with the softest wisp of a breath, “look at you!” 

Like a child, Francine’s shoulders automatically twitched into her own view, and she started to investigate with a twist of her arms and hands. What was she supposed to be looking for? 

“You’re a complete mess!” 

And the prophet’s sheep discovered this to be true. The black, rotting carcass of a searcher was splattered all over her body, sharp spots against her smooth hide, soiling her second shirt so soon after releasing it to the elements. She _felt_ she was a mess before that, she had to admit. Hair roots sticky with ink, and frizzy with abandoned care. Skin itchy, flaky, and pimpled. Face sore with the effort of shouts, making her eyes sting with every blink. 

_“Come here.”_

As she bathed in the angel’s light, the woman puckered a frown and unconsciously gripped her wrist. Something didn’t feel right. Why wouldn’t Sammy mention…- and indeed, they must have been- …another human being? 

Those last three words were what drew her in. 

She thoughtlessly got close. Very close. A round nose almost touched the small cracks in the pane of glass between them, each small line revealing how the window stood against time- a delicate barrier that somehow weathered the black storm of immortality with only a few holes to show for it. Francine had to crane her neck to look up at this person. 

She found she had unwittingly lifted her hand towards the being much taller than she, exuding otherworldly glory and possibility under a spotlight within this cage of a recording booth. The seraph’s face softened with a sigh and two hands rested parallel between their owners, only separated by the window between them. Their palms only felt the ridges of old glass, and yet it was as if they were holding each other so soon after they just met. 

“We…” the being began with great longing in their chest, “…deserve so, so much better.” 

And although “better” meant drastically different things to them both, Francine found herself in agreement. However, something caught in her throat- not a tickling inquiry but a coarse, scratchy one, one that hurt to contain like sandpaper down her windpipe. 

“…Alice?” It was a statement of both the affirming of discovery and the begging of questions. 

_“Yes?”_

“I… I just…” 

Francine was finally fully taken by the first mystery that enraptured her, the first thought since she heard the siren’s call. A squint fell to the floor and lips separated, taking too long of a moment to find its voice for the angel’s liking. Indeed, something was not right, and Alice started to perceive this, too. 

She would soon utterly despise what this silence held at bay. 

“He…he never…” The woman didn’t notice a sharp twist in the angel’s face, every detail of lulling hope becoming that of dawning revulsion. “Sammy never…told me about anyone else.” 

… 

… 

… 

_“What?”_

“S-Sammy. He didn’t-” 

_“WHAT?!”_

Right where their hands had met suddenly came crashing down the full strength of Alice’s fist. The utter brutality of it sent Francine reeling back and she consequently tripped over her feet, falling onto her backside with a guttural whimper of simultaneous pain and alarm. As she beheld the fury of the irreproachable, both their sides scowling instead of just one in utmost ferocity, shards of the window had scattered at her feet with light cries upon the floor. 

Something had overcome Alice. Every feature of royal abundance- of unwavering pristineness- was now a feature of profane, burning anger. Unknown to them in this instant of shattered amazement, Francine and Alice shared the same thought: 

What in god’s name were they supposed to say to _THAT?!_

And how much it terrified them both. 

…A shuffle against the floorboards a ways behind the mortal had interrupted their confrontation. 

The woman suddenly saw Alice’s chin lift; it now ignored the human now sprawled behind remnants of the glass barrier. Somehow, this deep, penetrating, unwavering hatred in the angel’s eye grew, and it was released in the most haunting and haunted of voices. 

“…You.” 

* * *

Once again, despite being so dark himself, every light in existence knew how to crawl over Sammy’s oily form and make shapes out of shadow. The flickering of tv screens put an ethereal glow over the mask of his master, and thank his lord that it was there in his stead as he faced the seraph. 

The worst had happened. The absolute worst had happened. 

It was before his very eyes. 

_“FRANCINE!”_

He without hesitation threw his upper body forward to lunge for the sheep, waiting for the arms of a savior, a protector against the wrath of those fallen from heaven. 

“Sammy,” a different voice replied. It was trying out the word, as it had been long lost to time and scorn. She had refused to use it. She refused to grant him that dignity; it was only fitting, seeing he refused it for even himself. 

He wasn’t the man he used to be, and was never the man she thought he was, after all. 

And suddenly he too was frozen like the lamb that waited for him just a few feet ahead. As he stood in the entrance of the theater, arm outstretched, the mere whisper of his name in _that voice_ was enough to stop him. 

Mouth agape, the woman could only sit in shock as the siren took him too. 

Alice’s cutting frown suddenly slid into a grimace- a pained grin. 

“You found another to _y, didn’t you?”_

What? 

“Another plaything that you’ll praise and rise only to bring crashing down.” Her right cheek twisted in memory. _“And you’ll LA_ UGH, and you’ll LAUGH, and you’ll-…” 

She gently banged against the glass one more time, a few more of its chips twinkling to the ground, and her head dipped. Light chuckles turned into breaths of sobs. 

“I can’t believe I thought I found someone… _someone from above…”_ She gasped heavily. _“Someone to help me reach perfection.”_ She inhaled with a sniffle before continuing. “But…” Alice forehead lifted slightly, and a sliver of her eye and her hole could be seen, pointed directly at the woman like a dagger. “You’re not any better than the errand boy was, are you?” 

Once again, this hatred turned towards Francine. Underneath a swamp of dark hair, a papery eye pierced its veil and pinned the woman where she lay like a butterfly displayed on a cork wall. It was a look of someone feeling the most profound of betrayals. She flinched when the angel began to pull back her upper body, the open wound of her face revealing a glimmer of bare teeth. 

“’Sammy!’ ‘Sammy!!!’ ‘SAMMY!!!’” she suddenly screamed again, the word fanning flames inside her heart till it emerged like a dragon, coming for the sinners perched at her feet. Just as suddenly, she calmed, and fire became stinging ice. “…I haven’t heard that name in a very… _very_ …long time.” She looked back up at the ink man once more, right eye pinched in disgust. “I thought you gave that name to our ‘savior.’ You know, like everything else about you?” A small huff roughened her throat, and her next statement was so low with contempt that it was hardly audible. 

“Not that you had much to give in the first place.” 

That word- “savior”- arrived so heavy upon her tongue that in that second, one could almost feel the ink demon in the walls- as if he listened, as if he knew, as if he replied. If he did, however, no retribution would come just yet. 

As the angel alone was briefly enraptured with apprehension of their god, Francine finally threw her head back to look at Sammy. She remembered that time she had found that horrible collage of pictures that drew up a monster in the safehouse- how she screamed and he came, how he immediately pulled her to his side- his innate caution. 

He only could stand behind her now, only capable of complete and utter silence. 

Something was deeply, deeply wrong. More than how greatly wrong this seemed before. 

“…S-Sammy?” 

He would not reply. He stood still as he had each time something new was revealed to him. The decades he lost coming back one grain of sand at a time had held enough weight to sink him into his intermittent darkness. 

And at this, knowing the prophet’s nature- spotting his unusual lack of never-ceasing bouts of religiosity that was spewed even in his boundless, pitiable fear of her- a terrible, regretful idea came into the angel’s heart; she had grown sick with his lack of response, of his denial to even argue the existence of his sins to her, and so her next taunt would change her forever. 

“Don’t you remember? Don’t you recall your friend? _The angel?!”_

It was said with a poisonous smirk that faded into an open frown, lips tugged further and further by dread with each passing second of nothingness. He only stood. He only stood. 

After all he did to Susie, how was stillness now all within him to do!? 

…No, he was dripping to the floor as well, wasn’t he? 

Each _splat_ that ran down from his palms echoed an admission of unbearable, overwhelming fear. Once again, the surface of his abs slid over the waistband of pants, a container that barely kept his legs together in the first place. Precipitously, the angel glimpsed that it wasn’t only fear of her that had corroded his form. 

To her horror, there was finally an understanding after all these years of hell together what the woman upon the floor had discovered within a matter of hours. 

“Why- why don’t…you…” Her voice quivered, having never felt before such an incredible toss of her heart to ground, and it felt like these two had come to stomp it into the cracks of wood, joining the small capillaries of ink that brought the studio its infernal life. Suddenly, everything about Sammy’s callousness made sense. 

And it was only hiding all this time because she refused to call him by his name. 

_“You don’t… You don’t remember, do you?”_

A look of surprise then tore into the deepest, most afflicted scowl. 

“…Damn you.” 

And that was it. All that she could muster. All that she could say to the evil frozen at her feet, encompassed by her broken glass. 

Abruptly, she turned her back to the disciples with a fling of the arm. They barely heard her speak, the air around her thick with revelation. 

“Leave.” 

The two unholy beings in her presence felt hefty alarm toss onto their chests. They were gagged with fear, and neither moved even an inch. Of course, this quiet could never last. 

And so the angel spitefully crooked back around to face them, and two voices merged to create an unbearable volume, one last roar of a lioness desperate to lick her wounds in peace. 

_“LEAAAAAAAVE!”_

Francine instantly found the strength in her limbs to scramble up and flee like an animal of prey, her feet blessed with the power of instinct. She didn’t run far, however, as in front of the exit stood a guard. 

Even as the angel bid their release- an act of mercy to the people who deserved none- Sammy was unmoving, solid in place like a statue. Francine stared up at the sentinel, his mask greyed out of reality as she knew it by the light of the cartoons that framed the shrieking angel, who had casted them back to their personal hell so they may be absent from hers. 

His face rested behind this layer of prayer and protection, unseen- an armor steeled against the pains of his past. 

The clatter of the projections behind her back began to beat her heart and fill her with panic. She heard the angel gasp in preparation of another command; they could not wait a second longer for his smothering memory to give him back. 

She took Sammy by the arm and hoped against hope that was enough. 

Thank God it was. 

He willingly, mindlessly ran behind her. A silhouette bellowed at them with all their being as they fled into the light. A lifetime of ache seeped into every corner of the studio, and it was shaken with their pain. 

* * *

Alice didn’t give chase, but they didn’t bother to check. The sheep dragged the shepherd over the stairs, through the lounge, and into the maze of machinery. Her legs only gave way once the walls suffocated them just a touch less. It was a room with a vent where long ago a dog and an animator parted and felt the anxiety of separation; now it held the anxiety of union. 

The disciples stood together, panting for entirely different reasons. 

She stared at him in disbelief, numb from the many questions and possibilities that their encounter with Alice Angel wove into the strings that tied the mortal and the walking corpse together. At first, this was just enough time for her to soak the horror in, but… 

She eventually saw that even after fleeing the scrutinizing glower of the angel, he still hadn’t the ability to do anything at all. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t speaking. Merely enveloped in his own trauma. 

Where was the yelling? The scolding? The questioning? Heck, as uncharacteristic as it would be, even the consoling? In the very least- dear God- try to EXCUSE any lies! 

Where… 

Where was he? 

Desperation flashed over her eyes. “S…Sammy? What the heck just happened?!” Bitterness crept into her tone. “Who the _FUCK_ WAS _THAT?!”_

Nothing. 

_“SAMMY?!”_

She grabbed his overall straps and jerked him towards her. He simply flopped, some of his body flecking droplets onto her skin and her shoes. His chin tilted down with the shake and angled at her, but it was not a seeing gaze. Her palms turned white with pressure as she gripped the fastenings that hardly contained this puddle of a man. 

Anything! Please, just ANYTHING! 

He remained as she was, and quivering hands finally realized to let go so they may comfort her in his stead. 

She doubled over before him, collapsing where his weight should have been to catch her in this moment, gripping her knees and mixing coughs of exhausted lungs with sobs of her heart. 

There was nothing that he could reply to that with, and it terrified her. 

* * *

A reflection of the siren appeared in every shard of glass upon the ground, each crystal capturing the image of her gooey flesh. 

She had finally stopped bellowing, but only because there was no strength left in her chest to do so. 

Gasping silently, a hand gloved with ink brushed her now muddled bangs away from her head- a yellowed horn brushing the side of her thumb as she looked down at herself. Her exquisite, yet oh SO agonizing self. 

For the first time in a long time, she felt sincere sadness. Before, it was just the anxiety of hiding from the searchers and avoiding as long as possible whatever rested within the clutches of the ink demon’s talons, seeming to beckon for her. It was merely a frustration tinged with sour hope to see attempt after attempt to reform her body fail. Now? With the visit of the weakest, most pathetic man in both this life and the last, she was truly despondent for the first time in years. 

Or maybe it was that woman’s fault, rather. 

Questions filled her, wondering if she was manipulated by Sammy- no, of course she was. But how? Was she still to be sacrificed, and the angel had allowed an executioner to lead the woman out of her gates like a calf to the alter? Or was she…- 

Alice felt her throat move in a gulp. 

…Knowing? _Accepting?!_

The idea alone filled her with indescribable outrage. 

Alice admitted that the “prophet” himself was…harmless. Mostly. Still however, Sammy was nothing but an embodiment of everything she hated. Alice’s split face was also split in dismay both for and towards the woman, what her alliance with Bendy’s “believer” may entail. 

As if this was a summoning, she felt the ink demon come. Her gaze finally tore from the shards at her feet as wavy stripes of grey grew deeper and deeper, shadows dribbling into physical form. 

_“…Mostly,”_ she thought one last time before returning to her life of hiding. 

* * *

As he stood over her, finally breaking through the vacuous tide of ink and black memories, he once again found his hand begin to approach her. The sight before him, his hand unconsciously centering its frame yet again, was… 

Horrific. 

Her palms shook with the tremors of ire, and her legs hardly kept her off the floor, wobbling like jelly. Her arms were so taunt that they too trembled, and that shake journeyed all the way up her spine until it rattled the hair upon her head like a tambourine. 

Just after leaving the dark pits of his brine- his vile incompetence to remember- he stepped into hers. He felt nauseous. 

After all, the way she was before him now was how she made him feel so shorty after they first met. 

Suddenly in the fuzzy edge of his gaze, his fingers shifted. He…hadn’t moved them from this reach yet- and they still hoped to move further and had waved to him in impatience. What would he do? They needed to know. 

Her soft, choked cries then began to drift into his heart and left him breathless. There was much that stunned, disturbed, and aggrieved his very being into the complete and utter darkness of truth, and it left him gasping for air upon her shores. 

The tangible problems of this world overtook the ones plaguing his soul. Thoughtlessly yet oh so full of thought, he began to bend at his own knees before her. 

His hand clasped his knee. Muscles twitched in effort. He couldn’t stop his stimming- his ring finger from tapping in anxiety over and over and shake the cloth of his torn pants. Like she, this movement traveled up his body, and it brought him back to life. 

Indeed, the sight of her brought him back to life. 

He kneeled before her, left lower leg pressing its entire length horizontally to the floor. His right was bent upright and virtuous, yet humble as its barely existent foot rested before hers, the arm that shook with life leaned over this lap. 

His neck bent to look up at her now that she had curled her body into itself; the dim light of the room was still enough to highlight his curve; it revealed gentle, yellow light and flecks of pale powder that tried to approach- an aura of dust broken by the breath in his shoulders. 

As he lowered himself to her, he was even then someone of great height; his head was far, far past where anyone else in Francine’s old life would be if they had taken these positions. And yet, it had never been done before to compare. It was a show of wordlessly immense sympathy and sorrow- a lack of assurance in how else to assure she was not alone, even in his failure. 

She was not alone in this torturing, suffocating uncertainty Alice Angel unwittingly hurled them into. 

The light of the bulb above struck his jaw as it looked ahead to her own, which rested upside down in front of her abdomen. The jagged window of his mask once again revealed a parting of lips, open with gentle determination. 

Croaky heaves eventually settled into a subtle pulse of inhalations, and eyes fluttered open to the face they had attempted to escape. It was blank, the mask- simply a grin of eternal optimism- yet she finally saw it carried so much. Scratch upon scratch tore over the paint and lightened the thin wood with tales of desperation. The worn eyes of Bendy were smudged with a hope that lasted longer than she had been alive. And beneath it all waited a man who only wanted what every other human being had. 

The mask was smiling through the ever-present misery of these inky walls and was trying to offer the courage that kept Sammy alive- enough of a human soul that refused to accept anything less than release- to her. 

And in all his tortured majesty- a living testament to faith- he had chosen to rest before the feet of someone with so much more than he, not to beg for what he lacked but to give what little he had left. 

…She couldn’t let him. Not like this. It didn’t feel right. 

Eyes tightened with burning tears, she took one hand from her thighs to place it upon his lowered shoulder; she felt its slick curve between her fingers, and his chill seeped into her veins until every inch of her body was cut with the same unforgiving coldness of the pipes. It may not have carried her own blood, but it coursed his all around them every step of the way. They were- and had always been- surrounded by his gory immortality. 

It gushed the blood of Bendy, the leviathan who filled every being in this studio with himself, life and death incarnate. 

Francine shook her head, prickling thoughts suddenly like dandruff clinging to her scalp and refusing to leave alone. 

She felt her expression die, outrage drifting into the calm features of clemency. Just for this moment, they’d think about something else. God knows that they wouldn’t be able to handle it no matter when it was addressed; might as well take care of the immediate. 

And the immediate? It was the knowledge that if he had chosen in each moment of his own purgatory to stay by her side, the least she could do was remain by his. If Francine was overwhelmed with the possibilities the being far behind them had presented, she assumed Sammy’s must be tenfold. The questions of the angel’s existence would fall into place where they may. She had to trust Sammy. She had to. Even if her worst fear was true and he had lied to her purposefully about Alice, about himself, about the past. 

She had to. 

Anything else would result in her spiritual end. 

Her touch knighted Sammy, again choosing to push aside doubts neither of them could answer for just for a moment. Just…for one moment. 

Let them rest, just for one moment.


	11. Safe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“’Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.’”_ – John 14:1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another long one! It's the finale of this section too, so I hope you like it! 
> 
> Please note that this fanfic will definitely be continued as another work, yet again likely to be a direct continuation of the series. It just feels better to segment it this way, both better organized and helps convey changes in atmosphere and plot.

Through dust and grime, the silhouettes of the disciples held a golden outline from the light of the room. Their expressions were barely visible, but the hazy vision could still discern the aura they emanated. Panic was merely a leaf in the wind in their storm of determination. Why did they trust each other after all that happened? 

As this question was pondered, it made someone smile. 

* * *

The chitter chatter of gears was overwhelming, but it was certainly the events that had just taken place that swallowed their usual conversation. Again and again, the incredible happened and left both the woman and the man completely unsure of the world around them. It was such a strange situation- granted that the former had total knowledge of the life outside the studio and the latter had been enveloped by this dark, twisted fate far longer than he was supposed to be alive. 

And yet neither of them knew what to think, even as their understanding melded two halves into a whole universe. As such, both welcomed the talking of the machine over their own. It bit them to ignore the inquiries of Sammy’s relation to the angel, of course, but both had resolved to find someplace safer than where they had stopped to rest before anything else. 

It was pitch black where Sammy had taken them; she hadn’t noticed before how she only barely traversed this hall in her earlier, fretful pursuit for her friend. It was only highlights of dim, glowing buttons and signals on the devices that made corners navigable. 

There was a light skidding noise across the floor as Francine gripped his arm to stop his leading. His mask turned parallel to his shoulders, a sliver of a mouth revealed and open in breathless waiting. 

“I- I have a light.” True, he didn’t seem to need it, perceiving how confidently he weaved the maze, but it would make _her_ feel more secure. 

The edge of her phone case glimmered a dark, dusty rose, and just when Sammy shifted his upper body to investigate more closely, his sight was gone. 

As the flashlight hit him square in the-…eyes? - he shouted in agony and his arms swung with wild alarm; it was a failed attempt to keep balance, it turned out, as his heel slipped and something cracked behind his spine once he tumbled backwards. 

As he half sat, half leaned onto a shelf in the path, the source of the light that had blinded him clanked to the floor, and its stream haloed the frizzy edge of her hair as it was flung toward him in urgency. 

“Are you okay?! Oh gosh, I heard something break!” The shadows couldn’t hide her grimace as she loomed over Sammy. “I am SO _SO_ sorry!” It was true that she hadn’t anticipated the ink man would place his face squarely in front of her phone- although he did that last time she showed it to him, _stupid_ \- she should have at least warned him. How easy it was to forget that her modernity was not a blessing but a curse if not used in utmost care. 

With a few groans, Sammy pushed himself back up to his feet. He was otherwise silent, until- 

“M-my lord…!” 

Her quizzical gaze was ignored as he brushed past her side, addressing someone that wasn’t there. 

Or were they? 

Where the smash had sounded now held the splintered remains of a Bendy cutout, its broken sneer only recognizable thanks to its distinct design and its history in their lives. The dust lit up and dispersed into the air as it passed over her flashlight, greying out of view as it drifted further and further away. Sammy, too, seemed to be drifting away as he bent down to hold a shard of wood between his fingers in veneration and lament. 

It was such a discernable act of regret that it came as a surprise for Francine to simply see him lift his shoulders in a sigh and stand up. Her anxious fidgeting filled his peripheral, blurred by the lantern. Quiet and shaken, his voice was bitter and weary of all her presence brought with her. 

“…Don’t do that again.” 

Hands held over her chest clenched together in both embarrassment and relief, accompanied by hurried nods and a brow furrowed with worry- which then rose in curiosity. 

He hadn’t resumed their journey to the safehouse, and he would not. This is where he had intended to be. 

After gingerly picking up her phone once again, she pointed its stream of radiance where the Bendy cutout had been set. Her mouth opened in wordless but questioning awe and her eyes darted back and forth. 

Despite being surrounded by them since the moment Bendy saved her life, this was the first time she had noticed a pentagram. 

In reverent comfort, a gleaming hand rested against its thin streaks, shaped with sinister magic. It was a tender, worshipful touch- but then it pressed harder, knuckles clenching with force- 

And then his fingers were gone. Just. _Gone._

The set on the other hand reached for her, as if it required no explanation. 

Finally, Francine identified why she didn’t catch up to Sammy when she first sought for him- why she could not catch up at all. When he left for the band room, he never made it further than this spot. 

Of course, Sammy was perplexed to see her shock; this was the third time he had led her to a portal, after all. It didn’t come across his mind that on the previous occasions, she was numb with horror and was just allowing herself to be guided - genuinely a lamb in the arms of its shepherd. But she was more now- a fellow disciple- and she was conscious to this impossibility he now made real. 

And since he didn’t know, it was assumed that it was his reach that made her pause; he contemplated retracting his revolting, oily hand- 

Just as she grabbed it and shut her eyes, gritting her teeth in preparation. She remembered now. She remembered his feet press through a wall, how when he found her alone in the pool of Bendy’s flesh and took her to a barrier, only to suddenly reappear somewhere else. 

She only asked of him, once again, that she not see it happen. 

Two hands- one wet and one dry- closed in on each other, drastically different textures obvious as a white flame glazed over them. The darker one pinched tighter just before dragging them out of existence. 

* * *

It was an all-consuming sort of oblivion. As she refused to open her eyes, it was unclear where she was. Would they open to something that was as empty as this seemed to feel? Was it a limbo of some sort, phasing between the walls? She could only feel the goosebumps on her skin. 

“Wake up, Francine,” a voice hummed. 

There was a slit between her eyelids where she saw her trembling hand rattle his arm, trailing up until she saw that well-known mask regard her in either- or both- patience and annoyance. She finally let go of her anchor to turn around until she found proof this was real. They were surrounded by yellowed wood and floorboards, a large collection of soup cans shelved by their side… 

And a pentagram behind her back. 

A shiver crawled up her neck as she realized her wild assumption was entirely correct. It was a quickly interrupted terror. 

“It’s about time we sing our old songs, my friend.” 

And without another word, Sammy turned away and walked ahead, as if the portal was merely an obstacle in their path rather than a miracle that had delivered them here. 

As she began to follow, the corner of her sight recognized the trench of ink in the first hall to the right. Steps instinctively slowed before adrenaline took over and she ran as fast as possible to step in tandem by Sammy’s side. 

She never thought she’d see the place where Bendy enveloped her ever again, and so it was far too soon to be here, even in passing. 

* * *

The flashing light of the “RECORDING” sign had been waiting for them, burning with enthusiasm as the two approached. Francine seemed to match its vigor, finally comprehending where they were- the place which’s draw had led her to Alice in the first place. 

…Wait. 

“Why are we here?” 

As Sammy lifted the vertical tin door to the room, he cast her a look. Oh, he didn’t explain, did he? 

“It’s…best you stay by my side, for now.” Certainly, it was his intention even before he came to retrieve the woman that he wanted her to be here with him, having regretted to insist she stay behind in the first place. He hid this truth in another- the sting of his vexation for her. “It seems you can’t be trusted to do as you’re told.” 

The chagrin of her actions and the acrimony of being scolded like a child fought over what she should say to that. They found a compromise. 

“I didn’t intend to leave! I-” She hesitated as Sammy dropped the entrance cover to oppose her, arms crossed and index finger tapping in a rhythm of provocation, anticipating how she could _possibly_ explain herself. 

Her chest rose and fell as she realized this anger was the kind of humanity she had wanted from him since when they first fled Alice. Maybe it had been a long time coming, but it had arrived. There was an irony in how the clear return of his personality, once so longed for, now made her upset. Francine held her lip between her teeth just a second before releasing it, finding that honesty was the only acceptable response. 

“I was…scared.” 

The incredulity in his tone was obvious. _“Scared?”_

Their newfound “home” was the safest place he had ever found in this nightmare of a studio. Why wouldn’t she be eager to stay, let alone sprint into darkness with no one to be by her side? What madness was _that?_

Her mouth pulled back in thought and her eyes slid to the floor. “Y…yeah.” A slow blink came as she tried to recall that flurry of emotions. “When I heard the door close, I realized that I wanted to leave with you and come back, well, here. So, I ran after you until- until I couldn’t tell which way I came from.” Her fingernails scratched against her knuckles in mindless disquiet. “I called for you and called for you and... you were just… _gone.”_

Abruptly, Sammy recognized how hollowed the woman was. It wasn’t an excursion of naïve, joyful troublemaking like he had envisioned; she had left to retrieve him and was instead pulled into the embrace of what lay in the studio, like an angler fish luring a nosy creature to its doom. All along he had received tastes of her distress, but it wasn’t till now that she realized that maybe, just maybe, she could actually die. 

From then on, he would have a conscious reason to pray for Bendy to never allow that. 

Her chin lifted as a weight fell gently upon her. 

As she did for him in the room with the vent, Sammy had placed a hand onto her shoulder. Compassion wasn’t his strong suit, but he didn’t need to put forth effort this day…not when what caused her fear had bestowed it to him as well. He felt her slowing tempo of breathing through his palm, witnessing anxiety slide into calm with his touch. 

How strange it was that even as the cold struck through her shirt and sank into her skin, that it made her feel a bit warmer inside. At least this time. 

How odd it was, too, that he took less and less time to think about offering contact, even when he dreaded what it may bring. 

His hand fell back to his side and a small beam upon her face briefly graced him, falling back down as she stepped forward to open the gate. 

* * *

His heartbeat pounded until it bounced inside every bit of him, rushing his fingertips. He couldn’t ignore the excitement- the mixture of elation and unsureness that swathed his entire body as he made for the instruments. Finally, they would feel her caress, just like they had asked for. Finally, someone besides he would give praise to their lord. 

Finally, he wouldn’t sing alone. 

It was an all-out, teeth baring grin that he kept behind his mask, a level of eagerness he hadn’t felt in what must have been years. As his thoughts danced, his feet almost did, moving from instrument to instrument in uncontained whimsy. 

Was she a string player? A horn? Piano? Did she even _play?_ Did she even need to? 

No, she certainly did not, he decided. The bliss in his heart was enough to assure that. She could learn. And until she did, Bendy would most undoubtedly be pleased another cared to chant his songs at all. 

He finally decided on the smaller of their options. Yes, the sharpness of the violin would certainly suit her. 

“Here, Francine, come and-” 

Behind his back, Francine had begun to stare up at the ceiling, arms raised at her sides as she turned to peer at every corner. He turned just in time to see her spin end in a flourish, plopping to the ground and then laying face-up upon the floor, skyward like it was a picnic blanket underneath the passing of puffy Sunday clouds. 

It was so ludicrous that every bit of his passion melted into utter confusion. Little did he know that the love he had for the things around him was not dissimilar; it had been quite a while since she was in a band, but it was a love that would never, ever die. As soon as she saw that box up at the front of the room- the recording booth that housed the oh so familiar shape of a music stand, she was helpless but to feel… 

Safe. 

Even as a broken banjo was left rested on one of the seats, said seat having been pushed aside as a searcher chased after her, the solace of this room could not be gotten rid of. 

Sammy didn’t know it, but they both for once had something in common. God bless that this was that something, but for now? He’d only be beside himself at her bizarre show of appreciation. 

Hair falling where it may, a dreamy glance returned his as he stood over her in disbelief. All he got in reply was two comedic raises of her eyebrows before pupils returned to their upward stare, a poor but fitting excuse for her silliness. 

It wasn’t only testiness Sammy felt. It was… foreboding. Dismay. This was time he set aside for his lord. He knew he was watching, listening, waiting. Francine must have caught a glimpse of the tension building up inside him, and so she flashed him a smirk. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch all that. I’m quite…” She flopped a hand upward, congruent to her gaze. “Distracted.” 

Harmonizing with her childish contentment, the apprehensive man responded with childish curiosity. In search of meaning, Sammy’s neck craned to the ceiling. Hm. It didn’t… _seem_ different, nor unusual. It still held the viewing box of the cutouts and the refuge of the projector, but there was nothing else to note. 

He gave in to temptation. 

“What do you see?” he asked. 

Another, slighter elevation of her brow followed, unable to answer in words the kind of peace a change in perspective could bring. Despite being a lesson taught at such an early age, it was one that only reared its head when it was truly needed. Just for a second, memory tainted her expression. She remembered how Gabby would do exactly what she just did almost every time he went somewhere new, as if it was the only proper introduction. 

Her painful nostalgia was derailed as she felt something rest next to her. 

Unbelievably, Sammy found himself lying down on his back, staring up along with her. She turned her neck to face him, but he either ignored her or didn’t recognize her gape as he searched for what she found. 

…Well, she supposed that she probably had surprised him just as much, and so she was soothed he had joined her, that her aestheticism wasn’t as remote as she thought. It was good to have a friend. 

“Isn’t it nice?” It was a confounding level of sincerity. He didn’t comprehend, and yet he accepted it as true. Even if it did make his mouth slant in annoyance. 

Suddenly, a soft laugh erupted. Amid the quiet, it was as loud as a volcano. She had laughed. It was the third time she had done so, but it was the first to move him. He felt his entire face stretch in surprise. Something above them that he just could not see had captured her and brewed delight until it bubbled out of her mouth. 

The microphones dripped down like icicles- like dangling threads- and the novelty of it had tickled her to the core. The purest of joys are the humblest, after all, especially within a world where few joys were to be had in the first place. 

The chortle had hardly stopped skimming her tongue when a new sound came to be. 

“Hey Sammy, I forgot to tell you something.” 

He did acknowledge her this time, head shifting to lay at its side- or at least as far as it could without the rim of his mask stopping him. Her fixation was upward again, but that sincere smile was still curving her lips open, wisps of eyelashes dipping and raising like gates to her reveries- dams that took and released the marvels she seemed to find around them. 

“You know…every time you call me ‘Francine,’ I feel like I’m in trouble,” she confessed with another giggle, eyelids squeezing with humor. “My- uh…” The arc of her lips abruptly faded, the stillness of loneliness taking her cheeks and forcing her expression to drop. “My mom…was the only person that called me ‘Francine.’” Her head rolled over again to watch him. “And she only did it, well- when I was in trouble.” 

She could almost see the concern sweep over him. 

“You…told me to call you that. Why then?” 

One side of her mouth stretched in guilt and their gazes no longer locked as thoughts flitted inside her mind. The air about her saddened just for a second, but then she returned to him stronger than ever, rapt with jest. 

“I guess I haven’t stopped feeling like I was in trouble till now.” 

And then she smiled again. Smiling at _him._ Unbelievable. 

“You can-… you can call me ‘Frankie.’” 

And inexplicably, the tide of memory lapped over his arms as if their recline on the floorboards was really them washing up at the beach of his unconscious. He still saw her, unlike the past occasions she caused him to almost grasp who he was, but there was… _something_ about that last word that took him. 

It made him uncomfortable- unbearably aggravated, like a fly that buzzed about his head, landing only long enough for him to end up slapping himself in the skull. It was a name that was accompanied by a trained irritation; he felt his lips pucker slightly in itching displeasure for a word he knew but could not recollect. Little did he know it was only one syllable off from something far, far into his previous life, the ghost of an unnecessary but ever-present frustration that could not be destroyed even in death and rebirth. 

An artificial poker face stared back at the woman in awkward pause…until in complete and utter exasperation, Sammy pledged to her: 

“I’m not going to call you that.” 

Maybe it was the curtness, the tone of it, or the fact that it seemed to wittily retort the hell they endured- always being “in trouble.” But she did not feel his depths, only his cutting sarcasm, and so she burst into laughter. 

Yet again he did not understand, but even so...a chuckle slipped out of him too. 

And so, hymns of struggle made way for the wonders of heresy. They forgot their obligation to the savior, and they could ignore the angel’s warnings just for a moment, couldn’t they? 

They could and they did now that for once in their cursed lives, they were okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your support, everyone! I made a lot of wonderful friends in this fandom and have had a fun, touching experience realizing people are reading this, enjoying it, and thinking about it! I never expected the series to be a mystery, but here we are- at least for now. 
> 
> Expect the first chapter for the upcoming work in this series soon, likely over spring break next week! ♡

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve actually gotten so much art that the character limit won’t let me put in all the links at the end notes! WOW!!!! Thank you, everyone!!! You’re all amazing and ilysm!!!! <3  
> I will be adding links to fanart as I post chapters, but please check the following tags. I’ve categorized things by arc/drabble so that you don’t get spoilers.
> 
> The overall tag for Hymns fanart is here:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/hymns-art
> 
> The tag for Hymns of Struggle as the first work alone is here:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/hos-art
> 
> Wonders of Heresy (the part you just read):  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/wonders-art
> 
> Parables of Empathy:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/parables-art
> 
> Flickers of Faith:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/flickers-art
> 
> Tides of Longing:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/tides-art
> 
> Cares of Communion:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/cares-art
> 
> Dances of Duality:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/dances-art
> 
> A Rock in the River:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/a-rock-in-the-river-art
> 
> What’s Not Yours:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/wny-art
> 
> General/Crossover Art:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/general-art
> 
> Any art involving Gingie (the Joey of this AU):  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/gingie-art
> 
> And a commission of Gingie painted by my good friend Ace hehe:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/177183125008/aceofintuition-is-there-anything-quite-so
> 
>  **And here’s a playlist I’ve made:**  
>  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLY8pGhalYoCuHX0dLpmuY3jNYntmUjltg
> 
>  **Read this if you plan on being so kind as to make me art yourself!!!!** (Some of it applies to content not canon to Hymns but still applies here):  
>  https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/176339938068/so-with-aces-permission-im-going-to-sort-of-add
> 
> Thank you everyone for your support!!!!!! I couldn’t do it without you!!! <3 <3 <3 Special thanks to the artists that have given me so, so much more than I could ever ask for:  
> Ace, Star, Silver, Gia, Metallic, Lil Griffin, Ufopilots, June, Halfie, Fern, Moonshadow0, Mango, CrowSketches, A-Rae-Of-Sunshine, Queen
> 
>  **THIS ISN'T THE END OF THE FIC, BY THE WAY!** Go ahead and read the next work in this series!


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